Christian Icons thread - Part I. The Shroud of Turin.

[ironduck]

Don't talk nonsense in this thread. !!

Another picture of what I mean with "not one on one":

That diagram does not look accurate. The skull is chopped off again.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

I'm going to start a series of threads the coming time on Christian Icons (like the Turin Shroud, Arc of the Covenant etc.) on which people have several opinions.

The Shroud of Turin

The Shroud has been dated by radiometric techniques to have originated from the 13th-14th century, which is around the time it was "discovered". It is either a very well crafted forgery, or a piece of art that was meant only to be art, but was misunderstood as the original shroud of Jesus. Medieval relics were widespread. There were pieces of the "true cross" sold all over Europe.

 

[shadow2k]

Ancient Jewish burial customs were to wrap the body in strips of linen cloth. Not one single sheet like that.

And did Jesus have long hair? 1 Corinthians 11:14 - Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?

This was because women were supposed to pray with their heads covered, but men were not.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The Shroud has been dated by radiometric techniques to have originated from the 13th-14th century, which is around the time it was "discovered". It is either a very well crafted forgery, or a piece of art that was meant only to be art, but was misunderstood as the original shroud of Jesus.

I think to claim it is forgery or art, you need to explain how the image was created. Of course I recognize that it not being a forgery does not mean it is Jesus' burial shroud.

Imagine slicing a human hair lengthwise, from end to end, into 100 long thin slices, each slice one-tenth the width of a single red blood cell. The images on the Shroud, at their thickest, are this thin. The faint images, golden-brownish, formed by a caramel-like substance, are wholly part of a super-thin film of starch fractions and sugars. Where this film is not brown, it is clear. Knowing the way certain ancient linen was made, the film covering on just some of the cloth's fibers can be expected. And knowing that dead bodies produce gaseous cadaverine and putrescine that react with sugars to form caramel-like substances called melanoidins, the color is not only possible, it is expected. Spectral data, chemical tests and photomicrographs show that this is so. All this is documented in secular peer-reviewed scientific journals. The honest skeptical inquirer must wonder, How can this be? ...

Whatever the Shroud of Turin is, it is not a painted, medieval fake-relic. The unmistakable images of a crucified man were not created by any known artistic method...Did not carbon 14 demonstrate that the Shroud was medieval? Could it possibly be wrong? Carbon 14 dating, the skeptical inquirer knows, is useful for dating material going back about 50,000 years. And it is extraordinarily accurate for material less than 10,000 years old. Yes, there can be problems with contamination. But the labs that do this work do a very good job of removing contamination with combinations of alkaline and acidic baths. And yes, absolute precision is impossible. In the Shroud carbon 14 samples there was less than one carbon 14 atom for every trillion or so carbon 12 and carbon 13 atoms. But the quantity of material was sufficient and the methods accurate enough to estimate that the material tested produced a statistically certain range of dates: 1260 to 1390 CE. Even so, there might be a reason to suspect some error.

There have been claims that a biological polymer was growing on the Shroud and that this could have affected the date. Not so! The National Science Foundation Mass Spectrometry Center of Excellence at the University of Nebraska, using highly sensitive pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry, could not detect any such polymers on Shroud fibers. Furthermore, it is well known that a biopolymer product would show the same carbon age as the Shroud because the organism would use fixed carbon from the cellulose fibers and not from the atmosphere. Similar claims that a scorching fire in 1532 might have altered the carbon 14 isotope ratios are scientifically unsustainable. The skeptical inquirer is right to pooh-pooh such ideas.

But as the skeptical inquirer knows, material intrusion is a potential problem in carbon 14 dating. A classic example is the dating of peat from ancient bogs. Miniscule roots from much newer plants get entangled in the peat -- some roots having decomposed into newer peat -- and this will distort the results. Could something like this have affected the results of dating of the Shroud? As it turns out, chemical and visual analyses, done in just the last two years, show unmistakable proof of material intrusion of new linen fibers -- enough material by some estimates to make a 1st century cloth seem medieval. The discovery of alizarin dyes (from Madder root), a hydrous aluminum oxide mordant and plant gum along with twisted-in cotton fibers and spliced threads in the carbon 14 sample region shows that the sample area was discretely repaired. These substances are not found anywhere else on the Shroud...The skeptical inquirer knows about decomposition kinetics. He knows that the cloth is linen. Each thread of the cloth is made up of roughly a hundred fibers from a flax plant. The skeptical inquirer knows about lignin, a complex polymer compound, one of the constituents of flax fibers. He knows that lignin's chemical composition changes over time. He knows that if a microchemical test for vanillin in lignin is negative that the cloth is more than 1300 years old, twice the age that the carbon 14 dating estimated...

The skeptical inquirer knows well that the familiar face, the so photorealistic face that astounds, is not the face that is actually on the Shroud. The face on the Shroud is bleary, ghostlike picture. It looks something like a soaked-in, blurred stain. However, when the Shroud of Turin is photographed -- something that happened for the first time in 1898 -- a startling image emerges on the photographer's film. The image on the negative, on the film, is a positive picture. That can only be so if the images on the Shroud are, themselves, negative images. What can that mean?

Are we to imagine, in an age before photography was invented, before anyone saw a photographic negative, that someone would or could create images like those on the Shroud? Why? How so, without an example of a continuous-tone, grayscale negative? Without a camera and film, how would an artisan know that he got it right? Perhaps, we might think, it was an accident. But surely, that is as improbable as Jackson Pollock dribbling paint onto a canvas from atop his twelve foot ladder and accidentally producing a perfect replica of the Mona Lisa.

http://www.skepticalspectacle.com/

 

[Rik Meleet]

I have pointed out earlier that the 1 fibre the carbon-dating was performed on was from a section that was used to repair the shroud in 1532. Is it strange that the Carbon dating of that fibre is not 2000 years ago?
No more fibres have been tested since, so I think the carbon dating is not sufficient in this case to claim it cannot be older than the 13th century.

 

[RameNoodle]

Um, I'll have to look tonight when I get home, but I thought that it had actually recently been proven that the body can indeed support the weight when nailed through the palms, given how they were placed on the cross, or something like that. Odd, really. Disproving the disproving??

This doesn't really make any sense, because, according to the Bible, I think, Jesus was nailed through the wrists, so I definitely think that it was possible. Plus, it was also highly likely that he was given a block under his feet, where he would be able to push himself up in order to release the pressure on his lungs, and breathe. So he wasn't necessarily hanging off of the nails. I am a Roman Catholic, but I don't put too much stock into these kinds of symbols. As long as there is something to keep me believing, faith, I think I will.
But I respect atheists.

 

[cgannon64]

I have pointed out earlier that the 1 fibre the carbon-dating was performed on was from a section that was used to repair the shroud in 1532. Is it strange that the Carbon dating of that fibre is not 2000 years ago?

That's weird. I wonder why the Church would have given that section to the scientists. Perhaps they didn't know what they were doing? Or they wanted to hedge their bets and not risk finding out the truth? Or they really really didn't want to damage the original shroud?

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

I think to claim it is forgery or art, you need to explain how the image was created. Of course I recognize that it not being a forgery does not mean it is Jesus' burial shroud.

You don't need to explain jack, because there are no alternatives. It is simply a man painted onto a piece of cloth. How it got there is immaterial. To suggest it is anything but a man painted onto cloth is an amusing "God of the gaps" argument. It's akin to suggesting that because we don't know exactly how it was done, "God did it."

 

[cgannon64]

Regardless of whether or not that God of the gaps argument is valid, that post is surprisingly incurious, coming from a poster who I take as a man of science...

 

[Birdjaguar]

You don't need to explain jack, because there are no alternatives. It is simply a man painted onto a piece of cloth. How it got there is immaterial. To suggest it is anything but a man painted onto cloth is an amusing "God of the gaps" argument. It's akin to suggesting that because we don't know exactly how it was done, "God did it."

Saying the image was painted does not make it so. Would you accept a christian declaration that the image was a result of "the resurrection" without some evidence to back it up? Paint has been ruled out.

The shroud of Turin is a mystery with lots of conflicting clues. One side supports that the image was made by a person, perhaps painted. Another side supports the position that the image is of a specific person and that the image was not applied to the cloth by a person. A third position, that has some support in the links I posted, is that natural processes created the image and human intervention saved the fabric. So there might actually be an alternative. Your inability to see other choices does not mean other choices don't exist or that those choices are not real choices. Explaining the image does not provide the name of the person depicted. That is a very different question.

If science could prove, as it is wont to do, that the image was painted, you could remove all doubt. As yet science has failed to prove that it is a forgery or other effort by a person. The continued failure of science to explain the image (and explaining stuff is what science is all about) only adds to the mystery and strengthens those you perceive as delusional (or something).

But the work continues and I believe that soon we will know how the image was made. It will not be a man made forgery or miracle in the traditional sense, but a miracle like the undisturbed preservation of King Tut's tomb, or discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. A treasure that we could not have foreseen. A surprise that softens some of the harsh realities of our world.

 

[classical_hero]

If you look at the image of the peron in the Shroud you will see that the person is quite old and according to the Scriptures, Jesus dies when he was still a young man.

 

[Birdjaguar]

If you look at the image of the peron in the Shroud you will see that the person is quite old and according to the Scriptures, Jesus dies when he was still a young man.

If you nose around the links I posted you will find some discussion about how the fibers and variation in the color of the fabric distort the perception of the face.

 

[Brian_B]

I have pointed out earlier that the 1 fibre the carbon-dating was performed on was from a section that was used to repair the shroud in 1532. Is it strange that the Carbon dating of that fibre is not 2000 years ago?
No more fibres have been tested since, so I think the carbon dating is not sufficient in this case to claim it cannot be older than the 13th century.

I remember reading about that and at the time wondered why they just didn't let them have a fibre from the middle of the Shroud. I know the Church probably doesn't want to go messing up what might very well be a Holy Relic but, come on, throw the skeptics a bone!

 

[ironduck]

But the work continues and I believe that soon we will know how the image was made. It will not be a man made forgery or miracle in the traditional sense, but a miracle like the undisturbed preservation of King Tut's tomb, or discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. A treasure that we could not have foreseen. A surprise that softens some of the harsh realities of our world.

What leads you to that conclusion? Knowing someting about human anatomy I can tell you that this does not accurately present a human (save for a very deformed one)..

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

Saying the image was painted does not make it so. Would you accept a christian declaration that the image was a result of "the resurrection" without some evidence to back it up? Paint has been ruled out.

As I understand it, there were traces of pain in the few fibers that were part of the actual image. In any case, the alternative explanation, that it was a ghost of the resurrection, is invalid, because there's no such thing as resurrection.

The shroud of Turin is a mystery with lots of conflicting clues. One side supports that the image was made by a person, perhaps painted. Another side supports the position that the image is of a specific person and that the image was not applied to the cloth by a person. A third position, that has some support in the links I posted, is that natural processes created the image and human intervention saved the fabric. So there might actually be an alternative. Your inability to see other choices does not mean other choices don't exist or that those choices are not real choices. Explaining the image does not provide the name of the person depicted. That is a very different question.

Doesn't matter exactly how the image came to be on the shroud. The point is that it's not Jesus. It's not old enough to have been him. Of course, I say this by humoring that there was even such a person named Jesus that ever existed.

If science could prove, as it is wont to do, that the image was painted, you could remove all doubt. As yet science has failed to prove that it is a forgery or other effort by a person. The continued failure of science to explain the image (and explaining stuff is what science is all about) only adds to the mystery and strengthens those you perceive as delusional (or something).

But the work continues and I believe that soon we will know how the image was made. It will not be a man made forgery or miracle in the traditional sense, but a miracle like the undisturbed preservation of King Tut's tomb, or discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. A treasure that we could not have foreseen. A surprise that softens some of the harsh realities of our world.

Continue to enjoy the mystery and stay in those Dark Ages.

 

[Birdjaguar]

As I understand it, there were traces of pain in the few fibers that were part of the actual image. In any case, the alternative explanation, that it was a ghost of the resurrection, is invalid, because there's no such thing as resurrection.

This is one link that addresses that very issue. The "traces of paint" were chemicals for which paint might be one source. IIRC, they were very limited in where they were found.

How do you know that the image on the Shroud of Turin was not painted?
http://www.shroudstory.com/faq/

Doesn't matter exactly how the image came to be on the shroud. The point is that it's not Jesus. It's not old enough to have been him. Of course, I say this by humoring that there was even such a person named Jesus that ever existed.

It certainly does matter. A medieval paint job has very different implications than a 1st C chemical reaction. As I said, the "how" question does not answer the "who" question, but it can expand or eliminate the possible answers. If yu read the most current science on this you will see that the dating question is still an open one.

What appears pretty certain is that the image is of a crucified man; the linen has real blood stains on it; the cloth was made in a way that is consistent with those made in the 1st C middle east and not consistent with those made in medieval times; it is likely that the face of the this image was used as a model when artists depicted christ after about 1000 AD. None of this proves the image is Jesus. Do you have credible evidence that the shroud was made in medieval times? Please post it.

Continue to enjoy the mystery and stay in those Dark Ages.

Your very dogmatic thinking about the shroud seems very inconsistent with your RL role as a doctor. Would you approach a sick patient with the same " I don't need data to support my diagnosis." position?

 

[Birdjaguar]

What leads you to that conclusion? Knowing someting about human anatomy I can tell you that this does not accurately present a human (save for a very deformed one)..

I'm not sure which of my conclusions you are referring to. If the image is deformed, does that mean the person was? Or was the process that created the image imprecise? I have no explanations for the strange body proportions. If the image is an approximation of the body, then that must have been what the body looked like. If the image was "painted" then either the artist used a weird model or was clueless about anatomy. Once you remove the "painted by artist" option from the table (as science seems to have done) you are left with some natural process to create the image and if that is the case, then it seems to me that the image must be a fairly close representation of the actual body. If you resort to the "god's miracle" position, then the science doesn't matter at all.

Keep in mind that the image on the cloth is a "photographic" negative and when photographed it comes out as positive. How do you think the image was "applied" to the cloth?

2000 year old burial shrouds are not common archaeological finds, neither are untouched Egyptian tombs from 1700 years BCE. However one attributes the preservation of such things, we are fortunate to have them and should be grateful.

 

[ironduck]

I'm not sure which of my conclusions you are referring to. If the image is deformed, does that mean the person was?

I'm not sure what you are saying either, so that probably evens it out My point is simply that when I first began to learn figure drawing I made the same kind of anatomical mistakes that are present in that image (if we assume it depicts a human, and it certainly looks like it to me). They are classic mistakes that almost everyone make when they learn to draw figures. The various proportions including head vs body and arm length in particular and the classic skull chop. Furthermore the fingers are also considerably wrong.. which is to be expected from someone who does such a poor job on the other parts. They truly look the way that people who cannot draw hands would attempt to draw them. I also cannot figure out what's going on with the shoulder and upper trapezius relative to the neck, it's really weird looking.

I cannot see how the messed up anatomy could be described by stretched cloth or anything to that effect, the effects of stretching and twisting cloth around a body would be very different from what I can tell and really cannot explain some of the weird things that are going on. I also think it's fair to assume that a person did not look like this. I've never seen anyone look even remotedly like this. I have, however, seen many many drawings look like this, and I have created drawings with very similar errors.

I'm not sure why it's so obvious that it's a crucified man. Judging from the picture alone I see white spots at the wrist and upper foot, something that could perhaps indicate it, but if they were supposed to be holes that were 'photographed' off somehow then they don't make sense as holes at all, there are straight lines coming out, and why would they be so blocked out in the value relative to other holes in the body?

As for it being a photographic negative.. well, kinda, sorta, maybe not. It still looks odd to me when I desaturate and invert it, see attachment.

I don't have an opinion on how it was created, I have never seen the cloth in person, just pictures like this one and they don't tell me much. It is an unusual looking effect. From my understanding scientists who have been interested in doing thorough analysis have not really been allowed proper access, so I don't think we can say what 'science seems to have done'.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'm not sure what you are saying either, so that probably evens it out My point is simply that when I first began to learn figure drawing I made the same kind of anatomical mistakes that are present in that image (if we assume it depicts a human, and it certainly looks like it to me). They are classic mistakes that almost everyone make when they learn to draw figures. The various proportions including head vs body and arm length in particular and the classic skull chop. Furthermore the fingers are also considerably wrong.. which is to be expected from someone who does such a poor job on the other parts. They truly look the way that people who cannot draw hands would attempt to draw them. I also cannot figure out what's going on with the shoulder and upper trapezius relative to the neck, it's really weird looking.

What you say is only relevant if the image was created/painted/drawn by a person. That has not been established yet. If the image was created some other way, then the "how we learn to draw" is not important. It seems that there are posters here who have declared/decided that there are no other choices and the image had to have been created by a person inspite of the lack of evidence for that having happened.

If you look at the sites I have linked to, you will see that a fair bit of science has been done and continues to be done on the shroud in spite of the churches reluctance to through the doors wide open for study.

I cannot see how the messed up anatomy could be described by stretched cloth or anything to that effect, the effects of stretching and twisting cloth around a body would be very different from what I can tell and really cannot explain some of the weird things that are going on. I also think it's fair to assume that a person did not look like this. I've never seen anyone look even remotedly like this. I have, however, seen many many drawings look like this, and I have created drawings with very similar errors.

Now all you have to do is explain how the image was applied to the cloth.

I'm not sure why it's so obvious that it's a crucified man. Judging from the picture alone I see white spots at the wrist and upper foot, something that could perhaps indicate it, but if they were supposed to be holes that were 'photographed' off somehow then they don't make sense as holes at all, there are straight lines coming out, and why would they be so blocked out in the value relative to other holes in the body?

Location of the blood stains (hands and feet) might contribute to the idea of crucifixion. And a healthy dollop of wishful thinking.

As for it being a photographic negative.. well, kinda, sorta, maybe not. It still looks odd to me when I desaturate and invert it, see attachment.

I don't have an opinion on how it was created, I have never seen the cloth in person, just pictures like this one and they don't tell me much. It is an unusual looking effect. From my understanding scientists who have been interested in doing thorough analysis have not really been allowed proper access, so I don't think we can say what 'science seems to have done'.

I've quoted the last part of this link. The first is excellent too. Read through it and let me know what you think.
http://www.shroudstory.com/art.htm

If We Wish to Think it is a Fake Picture of Jesus?

If we want to believe that the Shroud is not genuine then we have to consider some basic questions. How did the faker of relics accomplish this.

How did a faker of relics alter the chemical properties of the carbohydrate coating to create the color and how did he do so with such artistic precision -- on both sides of the cloth?

The history of art is the story of the evolution of styles, techniques, methods and technology. Every work of art and fakery is no exception. Every form of art and craft has precedents. When a new technique is discovered it is exploited. Over time the technique is refined and improved. Where are the precedents for pictures such as those that we find on the Shroud? Where are the other works in this new-found technology? Are we to imagine that some genius invented a new way to create pictures, that a single picture was made and the technology was lost to history?

How did he create a suitable negative picture hundreds of years before the discovery of photographic negativity? How did he know that he had it right? How, without a camera and film, could he test his work? The negativity is extraordinarily precise and correct. Was he simply lucky?

The bigger question is why? What was his purpose? What was his motive? If we are to ask why he created an extraordinarily complex chemical picture, in negative, we must ask some other questions.
Why a negative image when a positive image would be more convincing -- keep in mind that gradual tone negative images were unknown?
Why did he go against conventional expectations of his era? Why did he create a picture with wounds from nails that went through Jesus' wrists? All art and all expectation throughout medieval Europe showed Jesus nailed to his cross through the palms of his hands.
Why is Jesus shown completely naked, unlike in all artistic depictions everywhere throughout the history of Christianity?

Despite many attempts to do so, no one has found or invented an artistic or crafty technique that can reproduce even a few of the characteristics of the images. But that does not mean, that in the future, someone will not find a method to create such images. But if someone does so, the tenacious question will remain: How likely is it that there would be such a one-of-a-kind work of art for which there are no known precedents; created by methods that were never again exploited?

Any method that might be devised must be scientifically credulous, fit into the history of art and conform to the cultural expectations in which the technology was supposedly employed. If not, it will be seen as newly invented art designed to mimic an otherwise unexplained natural process or a supernatural event. The skeptic has a dilemma. To believe that the Shroud is fakery he or she must rely on an underlying belief that transcends scientific fact.

 

[ironduck]

What you say is only relevant if the image was created/painted/drawn by a person. That has not been established yet. If the image was created some other way, then the "how we learn to draw" is not important.

I'm simply offering a perspective in this thread that I haven't seen anyone else offer; that these are typical depiction mistakes of the human figure. You can take it or leave it, but it stands out very strongly to me. It is possible that the chopped skull could be a result of not seeing the top of the head (if the cloth wasn't touching it for some reason), but even so the skull still doesn't look right.

You're free to rule out that it's the work of one or more artists, but if we go by the imprint theory we have one heck of a disfigured person as far as I can tell. Disfigured in a very different way from the typical ones, that is.

Now all you have to do is explain how the image was applied to the cloth.

I think there's more work to do than that, since as far as I can tell there's not much consensus on anything as far as I can tell.

I've quoted the last part of this link. The first is excellent too. Read through it and let me know what you think.
http://www.shroudstory.com/art.htm

I just read through the whole article and I was blown away by the extreme bias. It's stated over and over that it's a picture of Jesus. It reminds me of the creationist articles that already have the answer before even attempting to curve fit the facts. So I really cannot trust any of the info on that site to be accurate, including what starches that are claimed to have been found. If you show me a scientific article with references I'll take a look.