Shroud of Turin News - September 2008

Here, again belatedly, is my Shroud of Turin News for September 2008, being only two articles. See important update. The previous issue was August 2008. The articles' word are bold to distinguish them from mine.

[Above (enlarge): Hologram showing three Hebrew letters under the beard of the man on the Shroud: "The Shroud of Turin: The Holographic Experience," Missouri Botanical Garden]

Plant life traces on Shroud of Turin draws local interest, St.Louis Review, Sep 5, 2008, Jennifer Brinker ... For decades, scientists have debated the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, believed to be the burial cloth Jesus Christ. Two researchers were in St. Louis to present their findings on the shroud. The event was held at the

[Left: Dr Petrus Soons presenting his "The Shroud of Turin: The Holographic Experience" at the Missouri Botanical Garden: St. Louis Review]

Missouri Botanical Garden. Some 400 people attended. Hear also Dr Soons' presentation at the Ohio Conference (mp3).

Avinoam Danin, emeritus professor of botany at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has spent years examining images of plant life discovered on the shroud. He also has discovered additional pieces of plant life on the cloth, which has provided additional evidence to support his theory that the shroud was used somewhere in the area of Jerusalem. Dr. Petrus Soons, a

[Right: Dr. Petrus Soons (left) and Prof. Avinoam Danin stand before the Shroud of Turin: Missouri Botanical Garden]

native of the Netherlands and retired doctor, has used digital photos of the shroud to create three-dimensional holograms, which have provided new and unique views of the cloth. While neither Soons nor Danin attempted to prove that the image of the man found on the shroud indeed was that of Christ, both agreed that their research provides additional insight into the history of the cloth. Missouri Botanical Garden president Peter Raven noted to the audience: "You will walk away with a tremendous amount of food for thought." Soons said it was after an injury that he began searching for authentic images of Christ and ... he came across the Shroud of Turin ... Using photos taken of the shroud in 1931, Soons enhanced them to improve the details and translated the grayscale images into depth data. He also worked with computer expert Bernardo Galmarini to produce from those images three-dimensional holographs of the shroud. Among his findings from the images, Soons discovered an oval-shaped plaque or medallion placed at

[Left: Dr Soon's depiction of what he believes are the three Hebrew letters on the Shroud.]

the bottom of the face that displays the word "lamb" in Hebrew. To know the meaning we go to religion" and the Gospels, said Soons, a Catholic. The word lamb, he noted for example, is used just before Communion, when the priest says, "this is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world." I agree that on the hologram below the beard of the man of the Shroud there are three Hebrew letters, which itself is further evidence that the Shroud is that of Jesus, because why would, or even could, a medieval forger add three Hebrew letters to his forgery, such that they could only be detected by 21st century science?

However, there are problems with Dr Soons' claim that the letters are, from right to left (as Hebrew is) `ayin-'aleph-nun: 1. there is no such word as `ayin-'aleph-nun, in my three Hebrew / Aramaic lexicons and another I consulted; 2. While the two Hebrew / Aramaic lexicon pages Soon's shows are too blurry for me to distinguish the letters, one of them (Klein's "A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English"), clearly has the Hebrew letter tsade in large print at the top of the page, indicating that the key words on that page start with tsade, not `ayin; and 3. The Hebrew word for "small cattle, sheep, sheep and goats" is another word tsade-'aleph-nun (ts'n):

"ts'n ... small cattle, sheep and goat ... flock, flocks of sheep and goats" (Davidson, 1966, p.638); "s'n ... flock, sheep. ... the generic term for `small cattle' comprised mostly of sheep and goats" (Harris, et al., 1980, p.2:749); "ts'n ... small cattle, i.e. sheep & goats" (Holladay, 1971, p.302) and "small cattle, sheep, sheep and goats, flock" (Strong's Concordance 6629); "ts'n ... flocks, small cattle, i.e. sheep and goats" (Tregelles, 1949, p.698).

But ts'n is a collective plural and (apart from Ex 12:21 which should be "flock" as per The Interlinear Bible and Young's Literal Translation), is never rendered "lamb" in the Bible, the latter having its own Hebrew word seh. I have emailed Dr Soons advising him of these problems.

I had thought the third (left-most) letter was gimel which made a word tsade-'aleph-gimel. I had then found what I thought was that word in one of my Hebrew lexicons, and it meant, "you will come out," which may have been the very Hebrew or Aramaic word that Jesus used when He commanded Lazarus to "come out" from the tomb (Jn 11:43). But alas, on closer inspection the word in my lexicon is tsade-'aleph-waw and the left-most letter on the Shroud does not look like waw. I will keep working on this, trying to accurately identify the letters and then check to see if they spell a Hebrew word. Of course it may be that the three letters are not a word but an acronym.

It occurred to me in April 2023 that the three Hebrew/Aramaic letters, from right to left, tsade-'aleph-waw are not letters but numbers! The numerical value of tsade is 90, 'aleph is 1, and waw is 6, simplistically making 9016. But "The Hebrew numeric system operates on the additive principle in which the numeric values of the letters are added together to form the total" ("Hebrew numerals," Wikipedia), so the number would be 97. It is entirely plausible that the Romans had a criminal identification numbering system. And since the Romans used Jews to do their clerical work (e.g. the Jewish tax collectors, Matthew and Zacchaeus - Mt 10:3; Lk 19:2), it is plausible that the numbers were Hebrew, not Roman. If these numbers were on an amulet, why didn't the disciples who buried Jesus remove it? They might not have had time since the Sabbath was about to begin (Lk 23:54). It also might have been illegal. See 27May23.

Dr. Soons also discovered several areas of the images in which data seemed to be missing. Those placed were marked with empty, black holes. Eventually, Soons learned of Danin and his research, and the two discovered that those places were perhaps areas that were once covered in flowers that Danin was researching.

[Left: Flower images on the Shroud discovered by Danin which are information`black holes' in Sooon's hologram]

Over the years, Danin, co-author of "Flora of the Shroud of Turin," noted he has discovered the presence of three plant species that indicate the shroud's origin was somewhere between Jerusalem and Hebron. Prof. Danin said in his talk that the three species are Gundelia tournefortii, Zygophyllum dumosum and Cistus creticus, and their distributions overlap only in the tiny area between Jerusalem and Hebron, which are only ~20 miles / ~30 kilometres apart! Eight species also have been used to determine, through flowering characteristics, that the plant life placed on the body happened somewhere during March or April. Jesus was crucified in early April (Finegan, 1964, p.296). No medieval forger would have known all this about these plants, and even if he did, why would he bother adding images of plants to the Shroud that: a) are only found together around Jerusalem; and b) flower only during the very month that Jesus was crucified! Danin said he also recently has indicated more than 300 flowers and plant parts on the head area of the shroud. Hear also Prof. Danin's presentation at the Ohio Conference (mp3). Those were discovered, he said, after studying photos of the cloth taken in the 1970s. Among the plant life identified are the Matricaria and Anthemis, two genera of the sunflower family. He also said he discovered plants from the Carduus genus of thistles, and pieces of the shrub Rhamnus lycioides - both potential evidence of a crown or helmet of thorns. This fits with Jn 19:40, "Taking Jesus' body, the two of them [Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus] wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen" where "spices" is Gk. aromaton, i.e. aromatics, and includes "flowers, perfumes, etc" (Robertson, 1932, p.307).

Shroud Of Turin Is Fake, Mindanao Examiner, Philippines - September 9, 2008. The image of a man on the Shroud of Turin,

[Right: A bas-relief `duplicate' of the Shroud, by Paul-Eric Blanrue and Patrick Shepherd,"A false Shroud of Turin carried out in five minutes" Science et Vie, June 2005. Its gross inferiority to the Shroud face (see below) is obvious.]

believed by many Christians as the so-called Jesus Christ, their god, turned out to be a fake. This is old news that keeps getting recycled, having been published in 2005, e.g.: "Turin Shroud confirmed as a fake," PhysOrg.com, "Shroud of Turin 'a fake'," News24 and "Turin Shroud 'confirmed as fake'," NEWS.com.au ... In 2005, a French magazine said ... it had carried out experiments that proved the Shroud of Turin, believed by some Christians to be their religion's holiest relic, was a fake. I have been unable to find a picture of this claimed duplicate of the Shroud, unless the above is it [I later found a photo of di Costanzo's `shroud' face - see 19May19]. A medieval technique helped us to make a Shroud," Science & Vie (Science and Life) said in its July issue. .... Drawing on a method previously used by skeptics to attack authenticity claims about the Shroud, Science & Vie got an artist to do a bas-relief -- a sculpture that stands out from the surrounding background -- of a Christ-like face. First this was just a face. Not a full-length body, front and back. A scientist then laid out a damp linen sheet over the bas-relief and let it dry, so that the thin cloth was moulded onto the face. There is nothing knew in this. As this translated French pro-Shroud web page critique points out, "But the technique has been developed in the 80s by Walter McCrone, an American chemist." But even Shroud anti-authenticity proponents Picknett and Prince point out that McCrone's iron oxide on linen bas-relief `Shroud' face, even though "he got an artist, Walter Sanford,

[Above (enlarge): Negatives of Sanfords's painted Shroud face (left) compared to the Shroud face (right) [Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," 2000, pp.120-121]

to produce it, was "nowhere near the quality of the original" (Picknett & Prince, 2006, pp.74-75). Using cotton wool, he then carefully dabbed ferric oxide, mixed with gelatine, onto the cloth to make blood-like marks. When the cloth was turned inside-out, the reversed marks resulted in the famous image of the crucified Christ. This is false unless the image had all the major features of the Shroud. And as the above French translated web page noted: "This is not a 3D image and the image of the Shroud is in 3D" (see further below). Gelatine, an animal by-product rich in collagen, was frequently used by Middle Age painters as a fixative to bind pigments to canvas or wood. The imprinted image turned out to be wash-resistant, impervious to temperatures of 250 C (482 F) and was undamaged by exposure to a range of harsh chemicals, including bisulphite which, without the help of the gelatine, would normally have degraded ferric oxide to the compound ferrous oxide. This was McCrone's method, to duplicate the work of a hypothetical "mediaeval artist" who supposedly "created the Shroud by simply painting its image onto the cloth using iron-oxide pigments in a gelatin binding medium" (Wilson, 1998, p.9). But:

"Because of the [1532] fire that the Shroud had been exposed to, there must have been a temperature gradient .... The binders most often used were egg white, gelatin, milk products, and oil. Any of these would have changed color along the line of the heat gradient. But the Shroud showed no color change of this kind ..." (Heller, 1983, pp.85-86).

The experiments, said Science & Vie, answer several claims made by the pro-Shroud camp, which says the marks could not have been painted onto the cloth. For one thing, the Shroud's defenders argue, photographic negatives and scanners show that the image could only have derived from a three-dimensional object, given the width of the face, the prominent cheekbones and nose. In addition, they say, there are no signs of any brushmarks. And, they argue, no pigments could have endured centuries of exposure to heat, light and smoke. This is correct, but the bas-relief method uses a "pigment," yet there is none on the Shroud, i.e. that comprises its image. For Jacques di Costanzo, of Marseille University Hospital, southern France, who carried out the experiments, the mediaeval forger must have also used a bas-relief, a sculpture or cadaver to get the 3-D imprint. di Costanzo did not use a "cadaver" but only a "bas-relief," so to save space I will ignore the problems of using a cadaver to duplicate the Shroud.

Some of the major problems with using a bas-relief or sculpture to duplicate the Shroud are: 1) there is no powder or pigment comprising the image as there would be if a bas-relief or sculpture was used (Antonacci, 2000, pp.73-74; Stevenson & Habermas, 1990, p.122); 2) bas-relief `shrouds' do not reproduce the real Shroud's 3D, superficial and non-directional properties (Picknett & Prince, 2006, pp.76-77; Stevenson & Habermas, 1981, pp.109-110; Stevenson & Habermas, 1990, p.122); 3) the bas-relief technique was unknown in the 14th century (Meacham, 2005, p.47; Picknett & Prince, 2006, pp.76-77; Stevenson & Habermas, 1990, p.122); 4) the bas relief would be a the real great masterpiece of art and it should still exist (Stevenson & Habermas, 1981, pp.109-110); 5) there would be many Shrouds mass-produced from the same bas-relief (Stevenson & Habermas, 1981, pp.109-110); 6) the anatomical accuracy of the Shroud's wounds and blood flows have never been duplicated in bas-relief carving or sculpture (Meacham, 2005, p.47).

The faker used a cloth rather than a brush to make the marks, and used gelatine to keep the rusty blood-like images permanently fixed and bright for selling in the booming market for religious relics. The bloodstains on the Shroud are not "blood-like images". They are stains of real blood:

"... the red stuff on the Shroud is emphatically, and without any reservation, nothing else but B-L-O-O-D!" (Heller, 1983, pp.215-216).

To test his hypothesis, di Costanzo used ferric oxide, but no gelatine, to make other imprints, but the marks all disappeared when the cloth was washed or exposed to the test chemicals. And see above that there is no "gelatine" or "ferric oxide" on the Shroud. He also daubed the bas-relief with an ammoniac compound designed to represent human sweat and also with cream of aloe, a plant that was used as an embalming aid by Jews at the time of Christ. He then placed the cloth over it for 36 hours -- the approximate time that Christ was buried before rising again -- but this time, there was not a single mark on it. So, Far from proving the Shroud is a fake, Costanzo has helped confirm it is genuine, as every failed attempt at duplicating the Shroud has inadvertently done! "It's obviously easier to make a fake shroud than a real one," Science & Vie report drily. So even Science & Vie does not regard Costanzo's `Shroud' as "a real one" but just another "fake"! ...

The quotes below (emphasis bold mine) are hyperlinked to references above.

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"Joe Nickell, a former stage magician and amateur detective, has experimented with a proposed technique of image encoding. Nickell's technique involved conforming wet linen to a bas-relief while impressing all the relief's features onto the cloth. After the cloth dried, he used a cotton dauber covered with cloth to rub powdered pigment onto the impressions left on the linen. The results obtained by such a technique ... show what happened when STURP members tested Nickell's theory. As is evident in the VP-8 photograph, Nickell's powder-rubbing method does not produce a true three-dimensional image. A powdered bas-relief technique would involve the application of a substance to the Shroud. As discussed earlier, all the extensive scientific examinations of the cloth indicate that no powdered particles or foreign materials of any kind have been added to the body-image fibrils that could account for the coloring-and therefore visibility-of the image. Specifically, magnified photographs of the body image threads do not reveal any sort of applied particles or staining substance. The `natural experiment,' arising from the fire of 1532, also disproves Nickell's theory, as it did the painting theory. Nickell promulgates that the powdered pigments used were iron oxide, myrrh, or aloes. Yet if organic substances such as these had been used to encode the Shroud image, they would have been altered or decomposed during the fire, depending on their distance from the hottest areas of the cloth. However, no such alteration in the body image can be found on the Shroud when those image areas nearer the burn marks are compared to those areas farther away." (Antonacci, M. , 2000, "The Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY, pp.73-74).

"ts'n ... com. dec. 1 a, collect.-I. small cattle, sheep and goat. - II. flock, flocks of sheep and goats ; metaph. of a people. tso'n idem, Ps. 144:13 ... " (Davidson, B., 1966, "The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon," Samuel Bagster & Sons: London, p.638).

"The Johannine requirement of having Nisan 14 fall on a Friday (and Nisan 15 on a Saturday) can be satisfied in A.D. 30 under (1) and in A.D. 33 under (1), both of which years seem to be well within the range of likelihood. Astronomically calculated, therefore, the likely dates for the crucifixion of Jesus appear to be either Friday Apr 7, A.D. 30, or Friday Apr 3, A.D. 33. Therewith, in terms of the standard Jewish calendar, the representation of the day in the Fourth Gospel appears to be confirmed." (Finegan, J., 1964, "Handbook of Biblical Chronology: Principles of Time Reckoning in the Ancient World and Problems of Chronology in the Bible," Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ, p.296).

"Assumed root of the following. 1864a ... so'n flock, sheep. (ASV and RSV very similar.) so'n is the generic term for `small cattle' comprised mostly of sheep and goats, but the emphasis in the word is on sheep (cf. Gen 38:17; I Sam 25:2)." (Harris, R.L., Archer, G.L. & Waltke, B.K., eds, 1980, "Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament," Moody Press: Chicago IL, Twelfth printing, 1992, Vol. II, p.749).

"Because of the [1532] fire that the Shroud had been exposed to, there must have been a temperature gradient, from the hottest portion, where the molten silver burned holes through the folds of fabric, through the area of scorch, to that portion of the linen which was relatively unaffected. The gradient of temperature, Rogers had calculated, went from about 900?C to well below 200?C. If an inorganic color had been used on the Shroud, it would have had a binder of some type to make the color stick to the fabric. The binders most often used were egg white, gelatin, milk products, and oil. Any of these would have changed color along the line of the heat gradient. But the Shroud showed no color change of this kind, as evidenced by the color photographs that were available. Organic or biological colors could be ruled out by the same reasoning, for anything organic would have changed in hue; it would be darker, lighter, discolored. But there was no evidence of this kind of change, which seemed to rule out the use of any familiar coloring agent." (Heller, J.H., 1983, "Report on the Shroud of Turin," Houghton Mifflin Co: Boston MA, pp.85-86).

"Adler was asked how he could answer McCrone's claim that there was no blood, but merely a mixture of red ocher and vermilion. Adler flashed on the screen the following table from our paper. Table 5 Tests confirming the presence of whole blood on the Shroud 1. High iron in blood areas by X-ray fluorescence 2. Indicative reflection spectra 3. Indicative microspectrophotometric transmission spectra 4. Chemical generation of characteristic porphyrin fluorescence 5. Positive hemochromogen tests 6. Positive cyanomethemoglobin tests 7. Positive detection of bile pigments 8. Positive demonstration of protein 9. Positive indication of albumin 10. Protease tests, leaving no residue 11. Positive immunological test for human albumin 12. Microscopic appearance as compared with appropriate controls 13. Forensic judgment of the appearance of the various wound and blood marks Then, after explaining each item briefly, Al said, `That means that the red stuff on the Shroud is emphatically, and without any reservation, nothing else but B-L-O-O-D!'" (Heller, 1983, pp.215-216).

"ts'n (273 X) sf. ... Ne 10:37 ... Ps 144:13; f.: coll. small cattle, i.e. sheep & goats Gn 4:2; sheep only 1S 25:2; males only (thus m.) Gn 30:40; bene so'n individual animals Ps 114:4; metaph. = Isr. 2S 24:17." (Holladay, W.L. , 1971, "A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament: Based upon the Lexical work of Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner," Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, p.302. My transliteration).

"In addition to the four unprecedented features described above, there is no rubbing from the entire medieval period that is even remotely comparable to the Shroud, nor is there any negative painting. Nickell's wet-mold-dry-daub technique was not known in medieval times, according to art historian Husband (cited in Sox 1981:88), and even that technique fails to reproduce the contour precision and three-dimensional effect, the lack of saturation points, and the resolution of the Shroud image. The bas-relief used would have been far more accurate than any example of 14th century wood carving or sculpture known; even later carvings by 15th / 16th century masters of bas-relief do not have the fine detail of wounds and postures which would translate into the undistorted three-dimensional projections of Tamburelli, confirmed as accurate anatomically by the forensic pathologist Zugibe (1982:169-76). Similarly, even the blood flows painted in the greatest 14th century works of art are not at all comparable to those on the Shroud." (Meacham, W., 2005, "The Rape of the Turin Shroud: How Christianity's Most Precious Relic was Wrongly Condemned and Violated," Lulu Press: Morrisville NC, p.47).

"His [McCrone's] final conclusion was that the samples contained a pigment known as Venetian red, which was made by grinding iron oxide into a powder. He claimed that this alone was responsible for the Shroud image. The ground pigment would have been mixed with a liquid medium for application; his chemical tests revealed the presence of a protein, collagen, that he interpreted as being just that medium. To reinforce these observations, he got an artist, Walter Sanford, to reproduce the Shroud face using the same materials, with tolerably good results, although nowhere near the quality of the original. ... The dispute between McCrone and the rest of STURP turns on two questions: the origin of the particles of iron oxide on the threads and whether or not they were responsible for the creation of the image. .... It was not the presence of iron oxide that was disputed by the STURP scientists ... but rather McCrone's belief that it actually created the image that led to their disagreement. So they tested it without resort to microscopy to see if it was present in sufficient quantities to account for the image. X-ray fluorescence scans during the 1978 tests had revealed traces of iron, but there was no detectable difference in its density between the image and the nonimage areas-although there was more in the bloodstains. Several suggestions were made to account for the iron oxide; it could have come from the blood, spreading across the cloth due to years of folding and rolling. On the other hand, it could have been a byproduct of the manufacture of the linen itself (probably the most plausible explanation), or it could have been due to atmospheric contamination. In view of these objections, STURP declined to include McCrone's two papers in its final report." (Picknett, L. & Prince, C. , 2006, "The Turin Shroud: How Da Vinci Fooled History," [1994], Touchstone: New York NY, Second edition, Reprinted, 2007, pp.74-75).

"Nickell soaked a cloth in hot water and then pressed it over a bas-relief statue. When dry, the cloth was fitted closely over the statue's contours. He then rubbed the cloth with powdered pigment .... He claimed that the result is an image that looks very like that of Shroudman. It has a similar negative effect but no three-dimensional quality. It must be said that Nickell's results, like those produced by Walter Sanford under McCrone's direction ... are nowhere near as impressive as the Shroud, even though both attempts were produced by modern artists deliberately trying to create a negative image. Although they were much more familiar with negatives than any medieval artist would have been, the hypothetical early hoaxer managed to outdo them. Nickell's suggestion has been criticized for being too convoluted for any putative medieval artist and as having no parallel in art of that period. ... Although they do reproduce some of the characteristics of the Shroud image, neither McCrone's nor Nickell's method-nor that of any other technique yet suggested-is satisfactory, and both researchers have been forced to deny or belittle the significance of some of the Shroud's features, such as the negative effect." (Picknett & Prince, 2006, pp.76-77).

"[Jn 19:]40. In linen cloths (othoniois). Late diminutive for the old othone, used for ships' sails, in N.T. here and Luke 24:12. Case here either locative or instrumental. With the spices (meta ton aromaton). Late word aroma for spices, from fumes. To bury (entaphiazein). Late verb, from entaphia (en, taphos) the burial preparations of all sorts (flowers, perfumes, etc.), in N.T. only here and Matt. 26:12." (Robertson, A.T., 1932, "Word Pictures in the New Testament: Volume V: The Fourth Gospel & the Epistle to the Hebrews," Broadman Press: Nashville TN, p.307).

"An artist who was good enough to create an image as impressive as the Shroud's would surely have made many copies of it. Shroud copies of this level of artistry would have demanded a king's ransom. Where is the statue or the bas-relief that the artist used? It would have graced the finest cathedral and become a famous image in its own right. And, to repeat a point made before, this artist would have had to have forged an image that, would not have been appreciated for hundreds of years after his death, until the invention of photography and other modern analytical techniques. The basic fact remains: neither Joe Nickell nor any other artist or forger has ever created an image showing all the characteristics of the image of the man of the Shroud. For example, none of them are three-dimensional, superficial, or non-directional." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1981, "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, pp.109-110).

"One other well-publicized set of attempts to show how the image may have been faked came from artist Joe Nickell. His chief example involved applying a dry powder mixture of myrrh and aloes to a damp cloth which had been carefully fitted around a bas-relief face. The result is also an image of the face, created by the powder, which, to an untrained eye, resembles the face on the Shroud. [Nickell, J., "The Turin Shroud: Fake? Fact? Photograph?," Popular Photography, November 1979, pp.99,147] ... The absence of powder on the Shroud and the disproving of any artistic process by both chemical and physical testing wielded death blows to Nickell's theories. Also, Nickell's models failed the 3-D test and were badly distorted when checked by the VP-8 image analyzer, as pointed out by John Jackson. Problems with shading and the fact that Nickell's model is not superficial (despite his claims to the contrary) led to the assessment that it was `unacceptable.' [Jackson, J., in Murphy, C., "Shreds of Evidence," Harper's, November 1981, pp.42-65, p.55] Heller likewise listed as a major failure of both bas-reliefs and block prints the fact that they do not reproduce a 3-D image, as the Shroud does. He also pointed out that no such bas-reliefs or artistic method existed in medieval times. [Heller, J.H., "Report on the Shroud of Turin," Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1983, p.208]" (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R. , 1990, "The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson: Nashville TN, p.122).

"ts'n for ts'on; as Psa. 144:13 ... a collect. noun, flocks, small cattle, i.e. sheep and goats ... Gen. 4:2; 26:14; 29:2; and very frequently. Opp. to baqar herds, which 699 see, Gen. 27:9; Levit. 1:10; 22:21 (compare 19); rarely used only of sheep, 1 Sam. 25:2. To this collective (which is also used with numerals) corresponds the noun of unity seh a sheep, or goat. Exod. 21:37, `if any one steal a sheep (seh), he shall restore four sheep' ('arba' tso'n); Eze. 45:15. Note. As to gender, it is joined with a masc., where it means rams and he-goats. Gen. 30:39 ... `and the rams (and he-goats) rutted;' with a .fem., where it means ewes and she-goats; ibid., ... `and the sheep brought forth;' but, Gen. 31:10, it is joined, like epicoene nouns, with a masc., although it means ewes." (Tregelles, S.P., transl., 1949, "Gesenius' Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures," Eerdmans: Grand Rapids: MI, Eighth Printing, 1967, pp.698-699. My transliteration).

"The Chicago microanalyst Dr Walter McCrone, for instance, had been vigorously maintaining from the early 1980s that a mediaeval artist created the Shroud by simply painting its image onto the cloth using iron-oxide pigments in a gelatin binding medium. According to him, this artist's so successful production of the negative was just a lucky chance deriving from his deliberately painting in reverse of positive tones.." (Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, p.9).

Posted 1 November 2008. Updated 28 May 2023.