This is my Shroud of Turin News for February 2012. The previous issue was January 2012. See that issue for more details. I have since reposted the first item to, "Old blood does not always degenerate to type AB, so the Shroud of Turin's and the Sudarium of Oviedo's blood group being AB is significant!" My comments are bold to distinguish them from the articles.
"King Tut's Dad's Toe Returns Home," (no longer online) Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News, April 15, 2010 ... A toe
[ Right: Mummi- fied toe of Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaton (c. 1353-1336 BC): Daily Telegraph]
belonging to King Tutankhamun's father has been finally returned to Egypt, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said on Wednesday. The bone piece belonged to mummy KV55, which was identified as Akhenaton during a recent major genetic investigation into King Tut's family. The son of Amenhotep III and also the father of Tutankhamun, Akhenaton, (1353-1336 B.C.) is known as the "heretic" pharaoh who introduced a monotheistic religion by overthrowing the pantheon of the gods to worship the sun god Aton. The terminal phalanx of his great toe, probably from the left foot, was taken away in 1968, when the Department of Antiquities in Cairo, under the supervision of the then director, handed it over to the late Professor Ronald Harrison of Liverpool University. "Since then, the specimen has been held securely in my laboratory, but I decided it had to `go home,' particularly since very few people knew where it was," Robert Connolly senior lecturer in physical anthropology from the University of Liverpool's Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology, told Discovery News. Connolly, who authored several scientific papers with Harrison, used the specimen to determine the blood-group of KV55, then believed to be Smenkharel, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the late 18th Dynasty. "The remains appeared to be A2 with the antigens M and N present. This was identical to the blood group of Tutankhamun," Connolly said. ... I am posting this 2010 news item here on my Shroud news for February 2012, because of its importance, and it is the first I became aware of it. I was alerted by a commenter bippy123 to my blog post, "Re: Shroud blood ... types as AB ... aged blood always types as AB, so the significance of this ... is unclear" that King Tutankhamun's blood type was A2. The significance of this for the Shroud is that its blood type (and that of the Sudarium of Oviedo) is AB:
"The most striking thing about all the stains is that they coincide exactly with the face of the image on the Turin Shroud. The first fact that confirms the relationship between the two cloths is that the blood on each belongs to the same group, AB. If the blood or each cloth belonged to a different group, there would be no sense in pursuing the comparative investigation, and little meaning in any further points of coincidence. This test is the starting point for all the others, and the results are positive. Blood of the group AB is also very common in the Middle East and rare in Europe." (Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, 1998, p.27).
But previously it had been stated that there was "a tendency among blood samples more than several centuries old always to test AB":
"In fact, quite independently of Drs Heller and Adler, other findings have served to confirm that what appears to be blood genuinely is blood. For instance the Italian pathologist Dr Pier Luigi Baima-Bollone, who has carried out thousands of autopsies, and who has had more Shroud `blood' sample than was accorded to Dr Adler, has not only confirmed it to be blood, but confidently identified it as of the AB group. [Baima-Bollone, P., Jorio, M. & Massaro, A.L., "Identification of the Group of the Traces of Human Blood on the Shroud," Shroud Spectrum International, Issue 6, March 1983, pp.3-6] Although this group is comparatively rare among Europeans and is found in only 3.2 per cent of the world's population as a whole, its incidence is 18 per cent among Jewish populations of the present-day Near East. [Garza-Valdès, L., "The DNA of God?," Doubleday: New York, 1999, p.39] Caution is needed, however, since some researchers have noted a tendency among blood samples more than several centuries old always to test AB." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, p.77).
But clearly since Akhenaton's (and his family's) blood type has been determined to be A2, a variant of type A, which is different from type AB, and they lived ~1,500 years before Jesus, making them now thirty four centuries old, then there is good reason to believe (and it certainly cannot now be ruled out) that both the Shroud and the Sudarium's blood was originally type AB, which in turn increases the likelihood that the blood on them came from the same Jewish individual, namely Jesus Christ! As I responded to bippy123's comment:
"While not a scientific journal, I regard this Discovery News science news report as sufficiently authoritative, especially as it quoted Dr. Connolly's words: `The remains appeared to be A2 with the antigens M and N present,' to establish that old blood does not necessarily degrade to AB. Especially bearing in mind that at 14th century BC King Akhenaton's ... remains are much older than the Shroud's presumed 1st century AD. Which means both the Shroud's and the Sudarium of Oviedo's blood group being AB is significant and cannot just be set aside by the claim that old blood always degrades to type AB."
See also "Another Tutankhamen puzzle," Research Intelligence, University of Liverpool, Issue 24, May 2005 and "King Tut's Mom and Dad ID'ed," LiveScience, 16 February 2010. The lead paper in the major genetic investigation of Tutankhamun's family is: Hawass, Z., et al., "Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family," JAMA, February 17, 2010, Vol. 303, No. 7, pp.638-647. I will get a copy of those papers in the investigation which mention the A2 blood group.
"Christian 'David' takes on PC 'Goliath'," 
Marisa Martin, WND, February 9, 2012 ...
[Right: "Jesus Christ the Word of Life," by Michael O'Brien. "This painting of Christ by Michael O'Brien was commissioned in the 1980s by Mount Angel Benedictine Abbey, in Oregon, USA. The figure is based on the oldest known icon of Christ, a sixth century "Christ Pantocrator" in St. Catherine's monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt: Living Bulwark]
You never know who you may meet mucking around a remote Canadian village. Take Combermere, Ontario, where mega-talented Christian artist Michael O'Brien pours forth enough work to stagger 10 ordinary souls. Not content with merely producing best-selling novels, O'Brien writes apologetics and essays, paints prolifically and illustrates books for other authors. On his days off he lectures on a variety of subjects such as Christian worldview and sexual abuse in the church. 
O'Brien's writing and visual art is unabashedly Christian, and he sees himself a type of cultural crusader venturing into the dark lands of pagan modernity ...
[Left: "Christ Pantocrator" ("Ruler of All"), "6th century icon from St. Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt": Living Bulwark and Wikipedia]
O'Brien's paintings echo his Catholicism, the use of Scripture and biblical stories almost exclusively ... Mount Angel Abbey in Oregon commissioned him in to do a series of icons similar to the earliest one known to exist, "Christ Pantocrator" from Mt. Sinai, Egypt ... His portraits of Christ often bear a likeness to the Shroud of Turin or older icons, which seem to have been influence by the relic ... A good thing about posting a Shroud of Turin news is that I find things about the Shroud that I didn't know and I can share them with readers who may not know about them either. I had not heard about this Michael O'Brien and I am pleased to see that he continues the 1,500 year old Christian tradition in basing his portraits of Jesus on the Shroud.
"Turin Shroud display set for Norwich Cathedral," 
Keith Morris, Network Norwich and Norfolk, 7 February 2012 ...
[Left: St John the Baptist Roman Catholic Cathedral, Norwich]
A full-size copy of the world-famous Shroud of Turin, believed to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, is coming to St John the Baptist Cathedral, Norwich later this month ... The special educational exhibition features life-sized photographic replicas of the Shroud. They make up a visual aid to tell the story of Christ's crucifixion from his trial on Good Friday to the empty tomb on Easter Sunday ... The Shroud of Turin also offers a mystery story that ties together many different disciplines - religion, science, art, archaeology and history and yet even in the 21st century there are no answers to the question `How was the image formed?' Although I may be in the minority among my fellow Christians who believe the Shroud is authentic, I don't agree with them saying words to the effect, "there are no answers to the question `How was the image formed?'" What more "answers" could there be? The only explanation that fits all the facts (since the AD 1260-1390 radiocarbon date of the Shroud has to be wrong) is that the image on the Shroud was caused by some form of radiation from Jesus' resurrected body, considering that: 1) the image is a scorch; 2) the blood clots which were adhering to both the body and the cloth are unbroken; 3) the image is of both organic (the body and plant parts) and inorganic (coins over the eyes-regardless of whether they can be identified as Pontius Pilate leptons); 4. the ENEA report showed the image was only 0.0002 mm deep. ... In December 2011, Italian scientists said that because the image on the Shroud of Turin could not have been made by any technology available in medieval times the Shroud is probably the burial cloth of Jesus. The Shroud shows the image of a man who appears to have been crucified and the scientific team attempted to "identify the physical and chemical processes capable of generating a colour similar to that of the image on the Shroud." They tried to recreate the shade of colour, which is like a scorched ironing board cover and the depth to which it penetrates the cloth by using short bursts of ultra violet light, using lasers. They managed to re-create a small section of cloth with some of the properties of the Shroud (at least at a microscopic level) by this method. They concluded that "some form of electromagnetic energy (such as a flash of light at short wavelength)" created the image on the Shroud of Turin. As ultra violet lasers were not available to medieval forgers it opens the possibility that the Shroud is actually Jesus' burial cloth, the image being created at the point of resurrection. It does much more than merely "open... the possibility that the Shroud is actually Jesus' burial cloth." The evidence now is overwhelming that it is! One of the scientists, Dr Paolo Di Lazzaro, the head of the team, said: "When one talks about a flash of light being able to colour a piece of linen in the same way as the shroud, discussion inevitably touches on things like miracles and resurrection. But as scientists, we were concerned only with verifiable scientific processes. We hope our results can open up a philosophical and theological debate but we will leave the conclusions to the experts, and ultimately to the conscience of individuals." I am thankful for the work of scientists like Dr. Lazzaro, but I don't agree with them `passing the buck' to the "experts" (what "experts"?) rather than coming right out and saying that the scientific inference to the best explanation, which has defeated all alternative naturalistic exlanations proposed, is that the Shroud image was caused by a "miracle," namely the "resurrection' of Jesus Christ, of which the image on the Shroud is a "literal `snapshot'":
"Even from the limited available information, a hypothetical glimpse of the power operating at the moment of creation of the Shroud's image may be ventured. In the darkness of the Jerusalem tomb the dead body of Jesus lay, unwashed, covered in blood, on a stone slab. Suddenly, there is a burst of mysterious power from it. In that instant the blood dematerializes, dissolved perhaps by the flash, while its image and that of the body becomes indelibly fused onto the cloth, preserving for posterity a literal `snapshot' of the Resurrection." (Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," Book Club Associates: London, 1978, p.210).
Posted 7 February 2012. Updated 29 March 2024.
Posts
24 comments:
Hi Steve,
1) the image is a scorch
It's been my impression that there's disagreement over whether the image is a scorch or some sort of chemical reaction in a sugary coating on the surface of the Shroud that doesn't affect the linen fibers themselves (though, regardless, it's agreed by all parties that the image is only about .0002 mm). Could both be true? That is, could the sugary coating be scorched, but not the fibers? Imo, it's miraculous beyond a reasonable doubt either way.
2) the blood clots which were adhering to both the body and the cloth are unbroken
I didn't know about this. I take it to mean that the blood clots show evidence of having adhered to a body, but without being ripped off of it?
3) the image is of both organic (the body and plant parts) and inorganic (coins over the eyes-regardless of whether they can be identified as Pontius Pilate leptons)
Are the coins and plant parts known for sure?
Btw, one other amazing thing I first found out about on Dan Porter's blog yesterday is that the differences in shading on the Shroud aren't caused by the individual fibers in the darker areas of the Shroud being colored more darkly than the fibers in the lighter part of the Shroud. In fact, all the colored fibers are about the same color throughout the image. It's just that the darker areas of the Shroud have a greater concentration of colored fibers than the other areas! I don't believe that any normal or natural method, be it chemical reaction or some sort of burn, could reasonably produce that effect. I think we'd be hard pressed to pull it off with the highest tech equipment today.
The Deuce,
In regards to what your saying about the blood clots, yes. That's what it means.
The Deuce
>>1) the image is a scorch
>It's been my impression that there's disagreement over whether the image is a scorch
There is disagreement about almost everything in Shroud studies! But the consensus of STURP was that the Shroud's image is a scorch, i.e. the image consists of "oxidized, dehydrated, and conjugated ... linen fibrils":
"Wilcox's 1982 article series, largely based on his interviews with twenty-six scientists from the 1978 investigation, confirmed some of Mueller's suspicions. Noting that possibly the most important single finding of STURP was the oxidized, dehydrated, and conjugated nature of the linen fibrils. Wilcox decided to ask the scientists he interviewed what they believed to be the cause of the image. Only seven ventured a specific answer. Two of them, Pellicori and German, favored the latent-image version of the contact theory even though STURP declared that contact theories are `totally incapable' of explaining crucial portions of the image. The other five scientists who answered Wilcox's query indicated their view that the image was a scorch . Even though a sample of seven scientists is admittedly very small (about 27 percent of those questioned), it is nonetheless quite significant that those who did answer believed the scorch hypothesis fit the facts better than any other. However, the interesting question here is, how can a dead body under a cloth produce such a scorch on linen?" (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "The Shroud and the Controversy," 1990, p.128-129).
>or some sort of chemical reaction in a sugary coating on the surface of the Shroud that doesn't affect the linen fibers themselves
There may well be "a sugary coating on the surface of the Shroud" but that does not mean it is the cause of the Shroud image. The scorch theory best explains: 1) the image is of both organic and inorganic matter; 2) the fine resolution of body details, even those over a distance, not in contact with the cloth; 3) the three-dimensional information encoded in the image; 4. sub- surface finger bones and teeth are visible; 4) the colour of the 1532 fire scorch is very similar to the image.
> (though, regardless, it's agreed by all parties that the image is only about .0002 mm).
I could have added above that the image is uniformly 0.0002 mm. I doubt that any chemical reaction, e.g. a Maillard reaction could be: a) so thin; and b) so uniform over the whole body.
>Could both be true? That is, could the sugary coating be scorched, but not the fibers?
I doubt it. Ray Rogers, proposer of the Maillard reaction theory, although he was a Christian, sought a fully naturalistic explanation of the Shroud image. He was heavily involved in the Creation/Evolution controversy on the side of fully naturalistic (i.e. atheistic) evolution. The scorch theory is inherently supernaturalistic because dead bodies don't naturally emit radiation, at least not sufficiently to imprint their image on their graveclothes. But then dead bodies don't naturally resurrect and leave their graveclothes behind!
>Imo, it's miraculous beyond a reasonable doubt either way.
No. Ray Rogers' Maillard reaction theory is a naturalistic, i.e. a non-miraculous, theory of image formation. An atheist could accept it as a last resort.
[continued]
Stephen E. Jones
The Deuce
[continued]
>>2) the blood clots which were adhering to both the body and the cloth are unbroken
>I didn't know about this. I take it to mean that the blood clots show evidence of having adhered to a body, but without being ripped off of it?
Yes:
"The second sign of the resurrection on the Shroud concerns the body's removal from the cloth. The facts militate against the body being removed from the Shroud by any human means because the bloodstains are intact. ... each bloodstain is characterized by anatomical correctness, including precisely outlined borders, with blood clots intact. If the cloth had been removed from the body, the blood clots would have smeared or broken. This precludes any separation of the body from the cloth by normal means. ... When the linen was wrapped lengthwise around Jesus' body, it contacted the shed blood flowing from the head, the open chest wound, and the left wrist, feet, and elsewhere. As the blood dried, the linen would have become loosely attached to the wounds. Removing the Shroud, however carefully, would require both the removal of blood clots and the disturbing of the edges of the bloodstains. Since this did not happen with the Shroud ... the body left the cloth in some way other than normal unwrapping of the Shroud." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud," 1981, p.156).
>>3) the image is of both organic (the body and plant parts) and inorganic (coins over the eyes-regardless of whether they can be identified as Pontius Pilate leptons)
>Are the coins and plant parts known for sure?
It depends on what you mean "for sure". Some Shroud pro-authenticists deny either or both.
As for "coins", when Jackson & Jumper used the VP-8 Image Analyzer and discovered the 3-D information encoded into the Shroud, they also found there were round objects over the eyes. A comparison of the size of these objects with first century coins revealed they were leptons, i.e. the widow's mite of (Mk 12:42). Leptons have been found inside the skulls of 1st century Jewish skeletons. Claims that on one of the coins can be seen a picture of a lituus (shepherd's staff) and writing identifying it as a Pontius Pilate lepton (which I agree with because I believe can see the staff), is a separate issue from there being a coins the size of 1st century leptons over the eyes of the Man on the Shroud. See my blog post "Re: There is compelling evidence ....
As for plant parts, you can see the large chrysanthemum for yourself, to the immediate right of the front top of the head, on a high resolution, negative (black and white) photo of the Shroud, e.g. on Wikipedia. It may take time to lock on to the image, but once you do, it's unmistakeable. See Avinoam Danin, "Pressed Flowers: Where Did the Shroud of Turin Originate?: A Botanical Quest," ERETZ Magazine, November/December 1997).
>... the differences in shading on the Shroud ... It's just that the darker areas of the Shroud have a greater concentration of colored fibers than the other areas!
Yes. Its a digital image, like a TV screen. The fibrils are pixels that are either on or off. There is no in-between colour.
> don't believe that any normal or natural method, be it chemical reaction or some sort of burn, could reasonably produce that effect.
Agreed.
> think we'd be hard pressed to pull it off with the highest tech equipment today.
Only if we coupled a digital map of the Shroud to a computer-directed excimer laser, could we recreate the Shroud image. Maybe eventually someone will do it. That would be the ultimate proof that the Shroud image was not the work of a medieval, Renaissance (Leonardo, etc) or earlier forger!
Stephen E. Jones
phyzics
>The Deuce,
>
>In regards to what your saying about the blood clots, yes. That's what it means.
Thanks. Why can't I be so brief? :-)
> ... 4. sub- surface finger bones and teeth are visible; 4) the colour of the 1532 fire scorch is very similar to the image.
The second "4)" should be "5)".
Stephen E. Jones
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Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. Each individual will usually be allowed only one comment under each post. Since I no longer debate, any response by me will usually be only once to each individual under each post.
Stephen,
No worries; elaboration is always great for those who want to know more in depth. I personally have used some of the material you've posted on here for my own essays over at my blog which is arguing the relatively the same thing -- that the Shroud is evidence for the Resurrection.
Stephen, as I say on my blog, I’m more inclined to think the image is miraculous in ways that we have never even imagined, uncaused by any byproduct of a resurrection event. Radiation, flashes of light, electromagnetic energy, cosmic rays, sub-atomic particles loosed from dematerialization: something by any name that becomes, “the physical and chemical processes capable of generating a colour similar to that of the image on the Shroud,” is naturalistic every bit as much as is a Maillard reaction.
Why do we think the Resurrection was a process? Is it because we need it to be in order to explain the image so we can in turn explain the Resurrection? Indeed, we need the theologians and the philosophers.
What if it was more like a quantum leap: one state of being and then another state of being without so much as the disturbance of a butterfly’s wing or a stray electron. Think of an infinitely fast movie camera in the tomb (humor me, they left a light on). In one frame there is Jesus beneath his shroud. In the next frame he isn’t there. We don’t see any movement of the shroud, even.
Dan Porter
Shroud Blog
>Stephen, as I say on my blog,
I posted my response to your blog, but it did not immediately appear, as it usually does,
But in case it is not going to appear, here is my copy of it:
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Dan
I never said (nor do I think) that the Resurrection was a process.
And you are using your own definition of "naturalistic." What I meant by "naturalistic" in the context is the opposite of supernaturalistic. That is in the philosophical or metaphysical "naturalistic" sense:
"Naturalism commonly refers to the philosophical viewpoint that the natural universe and its natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond the natural universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe that we know. Followers of naturalism (naturalists) assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the universe is a product of these laws and that the goal of science is to discover and publish them systematically." ("Naturalism (philosophy," Wikipedia, 1 February 2012).
I disagree with your "... the image is ... uncaused by any byproduct of a resurrection event." I assume the image was caused by Jesus' body changing state, as indicated in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, "... We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed" and Philippians 3:20-21, "... the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body ...".
But I don't disagree with your "In one frame there is Jesus beneath his shroud. In the next frame he isn’t there." Although I do disagree that "We don’t see any movement of the shroud, even" because when Jesus' body disappeared or became physically transparent to the Shroud, it would have fallen through the space where His body fomerly physically was. I accept John Jackson's "Cloth Collapse Theory" as the best overall explanation of how the image on the Shroud was formed (see my post John P. Jackson, "An Unconventional Hypothesis to Explain all Image Characteristics Found on the Shroud Image" (1991).
I note you have made a comment along the same lines to my post, "Shroud of Turin News, February 2012." I will respond to it along the same lines.
Regards.
Stephen
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Shroud Blog (Dan)
>Stephen, as I say on my blog,
See my previous comment, being my response to your post, which has not yet appeared.
>I’m more inclined to think the image is miraculous in ways that we have never even imagined,
If you are saying that the image on the Shroud was the result of a miracle (i.e. a supernatural work of God having an effect in our natural world), namely the resurrection of Jesus, then we agree.
>uncaused by any byproduct of a resurrection event.
But this does not make any sense to me. Again, I assume the image was caused by radiation emitted as Jesus' body changed state, as indicated in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, "... We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet " and Philippians 3:20-21, "... the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body ...".
>Radiation ... from dematerialization ... “the physical and chemical processes capable of generating a colour similar to that of the image on the Shroud,” is naturalistic every bit as much as is a Maillard reaction.
Again you are using "naturalistic" in a different sense than I meant it, which was "opposed to supernatural" (Wikipedia).
The Resurrection of Jesus was a supernaturalistic event, which in turn had a natural effect on the natural world, namely natural forces of radiation which naturally imprinted the image of Jesus' body on the cloth as it fell through the now vacant space where it was.
>Why do we think the Resurrection was a process?
As I said, I don't "think the Resurrection was a process." I had not used the word "process," but I do think the imprinting of the image of Jesus' body on the Shroud linen was a process, albeit a very rapid one.
>Is it because we need it to be in order to explain the image so we can in turn explain the Resurrection?
No. The Resurrection of Jesus and the imprinting of His image on the Shroud, I regard as two entirely different things.
[continued]
[continued]
>Indeed, we need the theologians and the philosophers.
I did not say we didn't. My point was that scientists should not `pass the buck' to the "experts." Christian scientists, like any other Christian layman, are entitled to draw their own conclusions from the evidence. And having drawn their own conclusions, they have a responsibility to state what they are.
See STURP member Kenneth Stevenson's criticism of his STURP colleagues, in his "My White Linen White Paper," who privately admitted that they thought the image was Jesus' but publicly hid behind the fiction that science could not say that.
>What if it was more like a quantum leap: one state of being and then another state of being ... Think of an infinitely fast movie camera in the tomb ...In one frame there is Jesus beneath his shroud. In the next frame he isn’t there.
As I said, I don't disagree with that. In fact in one of my comments under my post, "My response to: `The Turin Shroud is fake. Get over it,' by Tom Chivers, The Telegraph, 20 December 2011," I wrote:
----------------------------------
And 1Cor 15:51-52 tells us that this will happen "in a moment [Gk. en atomoi = an atom of time, the smallest unit of time. I.e. Planck time ~ 10^−43 seconds??]"
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>We don’t see any movement of the shroud, even.
Again, I disagree with this. If there was a movie camera in the Tomb, I assume that we would see the Shroud covering Jesus' dead body. Suddenly we would see a flash of light (which included invisible ultraviolet light) radiating from within the Shroud, where Jesus' body had been, but lasting for only a few seconds. We would see the upper half of the Shroud fall through the space where Jesus' dead body was. The image would be imprinted on the inside Shroud as it fell through the light radiation.
See my previous comment about John Jackson's "Cloth Collapse Theory."
Regards.
Stephen E. Jones
Dan
>See my previous comment, being my response to your post, which has not yet appeared.
This morning I reposted my comment in response to your post "Why do we think the Resurrection was a process? What if it was not?" which mentioned me by name, to your Shroud of Turin blog and again it did not appear.
I then posted a short test message, with no hyperlinks in it (in case that was the problem), and again it did not appear.
So unless you advise me to the contrary, I assume that you have blocked me from making comments to your blog.
If so, I would be surprised and disappointed, because, as can be seen in my copy of it above, there was nothing objectionable about it, except that I respectfully disagreed with you on some (not all) things in your post.
But if you have blocked me from making comments to your blog, then then that is your privilege, and I will confine my comments to this my own The Shroud of Turin blog.
Regards.
Stephen E. Jones
Hi Steve,
What I meant by "chemical reaction" is that perhaps the Shroud image is caused by some chemical modification other than a scorch, but that it's still clearly miraculous either way, much like the chemical change involved in changing water into wine. That is, even if it's a chemical reaction, there's no chemical reaction that would produce all the features of the Shroud naturally.
My supposition of what it would have looked like is this: You would have seen Jesus' body disappear suddenly, and in that same moment, the image would have appeared on the Shroud. My current suspicion is that the image is a deliberate miracle of its own, rather than a side-effect or byproduct of the cloth falling through Jesus' radiating body falling through the cloth, and I think he deliberately made the image with such features that no plausible naturalistic explanation would be workable.
Btw, it took a little while, but I saw the flower. It's actually very strong evidence for the Shroud's authenticity imo, because it's barely perceptible, even with the contrast-enhanced photo negative. It clearly wasn't placed there deliberately by an artist, as it's not even visible to the naked eye, so it shows that the Shroud was from an actual burial.
The Deuce
>...but that it's still clearly miraculous either way, much like the chemical change involved in changing water into wine.
Jesus' changing water into wine in John 2 cannot be a chemical reaction. Water is H2O and ethanol (the alcohol in wine) is CH3CH2OH. So there is no carbon C in water, but there is in dissolved CO2. But whether there is enough C in the CO2 to make all the C in CH3CH2OH, I don't know. The water was in stone jars so the carbon could not come from wood.
But the chemical process, fermentation, which produces wine, involves enzymes (special protein molecules) that would not be found in water, and in any event, it takes a lot of time - weeks or months.
So it seems best to think of Jesus supernaturally changing water into wine as a sort of nuclear (i.e. atomic) reaction, where some of the atoms of H2O are converted into the required atoms of CH3CH2OH.
>... there's no chemical reaction that would produce all the features of the Shroud naturally.
My point was that a chemical reaction would not produce all the features of the Shroud even supernaturally. Even apart from the inorganic images (e.g. coins over the eyes), and the `xrays' images of the teeth and finger bones, chemical reactions across an air space are diffuse, and would not produce a sharp image, as the Shroud's is.
>... My current suspicion is that the image is a deliberate miracle of its own, rather than a side-effect or byproduct of the cloth falling through Jesus' radiating body ...
OK. But whether you realise it or not, that would mean that Jesus and/or God were guilty of deception in making it look like the cloth fell through the radiation emitted as Jesus' body dematerialised, when it really didn't.
For example, the 3D effect is a function of the length of time each point on the Shroud was exposed to the radiation. Read Jackson's paper carefully, noting all the charcteristics of the Shroud's image that his "Cloth Collapse" theory explains. But if you then still disagree, then I see no point in debating it further. We would then have to agree to differ.
>Btw, it took a little while, but I saw the flower. It's actually very strong evidence for the Shroud's authenticity imo, because it's barely perceptible, even with the contrast-enhanced photo negative.
Great! It is difficult to see the chrysanthemum on the Shroud positive (what one would see in an exhibition of the Shroud). It is less difficult to see on the black and white negative (which actually is a photo positive because the Shroud is a photo negative).
>It clearly wasn't placed there deliberately by an artist, as it's not even visible to the naked eye, so it shows that the Shroud was from an actual burial.
Good point. The fact is that if the Shroud had been produced in the 14th century, they were so gullible back then that the forger would not have needed to go to all that trouble, to include features on the Shroud that few (if any) could even see, let alone understand (including the forger himself!):
"Also is it not rather incredible that this unknown individual should have gone to so much trouble and effort to deceive in an age in which, as twentieth-century journalists have reminded us, a large proportion of the populace would have been very easily duped by a feather of the Archangel Gabriel or a phial of the last breath of St Joseph?" (Wilson, I., "The Blood and the Shroud," 1998, pp.59-60).
Thanks for your comments, but according to my policy below, this has been your last under this post.
Stephen E. Jones
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Comments ... Each individual will usually be allowed only one comment under each post. Since I no longer debate, any response by me will usually be only once to each individual under each post.
"""The second sign of the resurrection on the Shroud concerns the body's removal from the cloth. The facts militate against the body being removed from the Shroud by any human means because the bloodstains are intact. ... each bloodstain is characterized by anatomical correctness, including precisely outlined borders, with blood clots intact. If the cloth had been removed from the body, the blood clots would have smeared or broken. This precludes any separation of the body from the cloth by normal means. ... When the linen was wrapped lengthwise around Jesus' body, it contacted the shed blood flowing from the head, the open chest wound, and the left wrist, feet, and elsewhere. As the blood dried, the linen would have become loosely attached to the wounds. Removing the Shroud, however carefully, would require both the removal of blood clots and the disturbing of the edges of the bloodstains. Since this did not happen with the Shroud ... the body left the cloth in some way other than normal unwrapping of the Shroud." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud," 1981, p.156)."""
Great find Stephen. In my 2 years of research on the shroud I completely forgot to think about how the body left the shroud without causing smears on the shroud.
The more I study the shroud the more excited I get. I just have to learn how to be a bit more calm keyed though :)
Finally some CONCRETE evidence on the blood. I've been searching for months trying to find the true answer to the statement "that all blood turns to AB after a time". My search was fruitless as I could not find any scientific evidence to that statement. But here we now have strong evidence in the finding that Akhenaton's blood type was A2. What an incredible find. It seems that recently (In the last decade), so much new evidence has been coming forth only adding to the truth that the Shroud IS what it appears to be; The burial cloth of Christ!
F3
bippy123
>Great find Stephen.
It was not a recent find. Stevenson & Habermas' Verdict on the Shroud (1981) was the first book on the Shroud that I read (as a sceptic), and the evidence that the blood clots were intact was a major reason why I came to accept the Shroud as authentic.
>In my 2 years of research on the shroud I completely forgot to think about how the body left the shroud without causing smears on the shroud.
Perhaps not enough has been made of it in other Shroud books or articles?
Stevenson & Habermas' 1981 "Verdict on the Shroud" is well worth reading. It was before the 1988 carbon dating, which is a good thing because, because it doesn't have to waste space explaining that away.
When I first read their book in 2005, I did not know about the 1988 carbon dating of the Shroud to 1260-1390. My wife told me only the other day that it was in the media at the time but I could not remember it.
I found out about the C14 dating of the Shroud from an atheist on my now defunct CreationEvolutionDesign Yahoo discussion group.
But without having at the time read anything defending the Shroud against the "medieval" C14 dating (since I did not even know about it), having done a Physics unit in my B.Sc. Biology degree a year or so previously, off the top of my head I could think of several reasons why the C14 date could have been wrong.
See my "Re: 1. Turin shroud older than thought -- NOT" of Jan 28, 2005.
>The more I study the shroud the more excited I get.
Agreed!
Stephen E. Jones
Flagrum3
>I've been searching for months trying to find the true answer to the statement "that all blood turns to AB after a time". My search was fruitless as I could not find any scientific evidence to that statement.
Same here. In my post above I wrote:
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... Surprisingly there does not seem to be much in the Shroud literature on the topic of blood losing its distinctive antibodies over time and coming to resemble type AB blood.
Also, there may not be much (if anything) in the scientific literature about all blood types losing their distinctive antibodies over time and becoming the same as type AB (no antibodies), because it may not be of much use either to archaeology or forensic science, the former probably not being interested in blood types and the latter being only interested in comparatively recent blood.
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>But here we now have strong evidence in the finding that Akhenaton's blood type was A2. What an incredible find.
Often the information we need is already out there but we don't know that it is, what it is, or where it is.
>It seems that recently (In the last decade), so much new evidence has been coming forth only adding to the truth that the Shroud IS what it appears to be; The burial cloth of Christ!
Yes. The evidence is all flowing one way: towards the Shroud being the very burial sheet of Jesus!
What counter-evidence there was, e.g. the 1988 C14 dating of AD 1260-1390 has largely been discredited.
Stephen E. Jones
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Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. Each individual will usually be allowed only one comment under each post. Since I no longer debate, any response by me will usually be only once to each individual under each post.
Inteesting enough the fact that the blood stains are not damaged is evidence it wasn;t made by a normal scorch through artistic methods. This may be a hunch so could some one elaborate for me.
Anonymous
>... the fact that the blood stains are not damaged is evidence it wasn;t made by a normal scorch through artistic methods.
That the blood clots are not damaged is only evidence against those forgery theories that maintain there was contact between a body (real or artificial) and the cloth, e.g. the crucified medieval victim theory; or the hot statue theory making a scorch imprint on the linen, which may be what you mean.
But that the blood clots are intact is is not of itself evidence against those other forgery theories in which there was no body to contact the cloth, e.g. painting or primitive photography theories.
Stephen E. Jones
Hello, I've got a question concerning the "transformation" of any blood type into blood type AB:
The blood type of that mummy shows that not all blood types necessarily become AB after some time, but it doesn't answer the question whether all blood types TEND to transform into AB.
Does anyone know if there is a TREND in all (or possibly even specific) blood types to transform (or be tested as) blood type AB?
Anonymous
>Hello, I've got a question concerning the "transformation" of any blood type into blood type AB:
I had reposted this blood type AB part of my Shroud News to a separate post, "Old blood does not always degenerate to type AB, so the Shroud of Turin's and the Sudarium of Oviedo's AB blood group is significant!"
>The blood type of that mummy shows that not all blood types necessarily become AB after some time,
It wasn't just "some time" but nearly 3350 years, since Akhenaton, whose type A2 blood it was died in 1336 BC.
That's nearly 1370 years older than the Shroud's blood (assuming it is Jesus' blood on the Shroud dating from AD 30).
>but it doesn't answer the question whether all blood types TEND to transform into AB.
I don't know, but it is irrelevant as far as the Shroud is concerned, because there are examples of blood that is far older than the Shroud's blood (again assuming it is Jesus' blood dating from AD 30) yet which has not degenerated into type AB.
Therefore it cannot be claimed that the Shroud of Turin's and the Sudarium of Oviedo's blood being both type AB is meaningless because "old blood (i.e. 2000 years old) always degenerates into type AB."
>Does anyone know if there is a TREND in all (or possibly even specific) blood types to transform (or be tested as) blood type AB?
Well, if it hasn't happened in nearly 3350 years in the case of this mummified toe of AAkhenaton, who died in 1336 BC, then either there is no trend or it is an extremely long term trend, far longer than the 1982 years Jesus' blood has been on the Shroud (again assuming it is His).
Stephen E. Jones
Thanks for your answer. I was asking because of the quotation you mentioned:
"Caution is needed, however, since some researchers have noted a TENDENCY among blood samples more than several centuries old always to test AB."
So - if I understood you right - it's safe to say that the blood on the shroud and Sudarium being AB is neither 100% sure nor meaningless?
Hello Stephen E. Jones.
It seems that you overlooked my last question so I decided to ask it again:
If I understood you right - it's safe to say that the blood on the shroud and Sudarium being AB is neither 100% sure nor meaningless?
Kind regards
Anonymous
>Thanks for your answer. I was asking because of the quotation you mentioned:
>
>"Caution is needed, however, since some researchers have noted a TENDENCY among blood samples more than several centuries old always to test AB."
>
>So - if I understood you right - it's safe to say that the blood on the shroud and Sudarium being AB is neither 100% sure nor meaningless?
No. My position now is that that that quote from one of Wilson's books, which had no reference to who these "some researchers" were, is WRONG.
My position now is that the reason the blood from the Shroud and Sudarium of Oviedo is type AB is that it came from the one Jewish male (a gene from the male Y chromosome was also found in the Shroud's blood), namely Jesus!
Stephen E. Jones
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