Here are my comments on an article in Britain's Daily Mail, which is repeated in Independent Online, Belfast Telegraph, etc. For a critique, see "Shroud of Turin expert makes lots of claims but where's the proof?," Donna Anderson, Coast to Coast Radio Examiner, June 11, 2012. The article's words are are bold to distinguish them from mine.
"The Turin Shroud is a fake ... and it's one of 40: Historian claims linen cloths were produced 1,300 years after crucifixion," Daily Mail, Matthew Kalman, 11 June 2012. Since the crucifixion of Jesus was either in AD 30 or 33, therefore "1,300 years after crucifixion" means
[Above (click to enlarge): The frontal head and upper body area of a copy of the Turin Shroud discovered in 1999 in a box in the monasterial church of Broumov, Czechia (formerly Czechoslovakia). The linen cloth is 4.71 m x 1.2 m, about the same size as the Shroud. Accompanying it was a letter of authenticity from the then Archbishop of Turin, dated 4 May 1651. Unlike the Shroud original, but like all other copies of the Shroud, it has no photographic negative or three-dimensional properties, and the image shows brush strokes and paint particles. Also note the above Latin inscription "EXTRACTVM AB ORIGINALI" (derived from the original): Dr. Leo Bazant-Hegemark, "Report on the Czechia Shroud Copy," 1999 & "Broumovo vienuolynas," Mytrips.It, 1 September, 2011.]
that Antonio Lombatti is claiming that the Shroud of Turin was forged about 1330. But then (for starters) Lombatti would have the problem of explaining away the Pray Manuscript, which is securely dated 1192-95 (i.e. about 135 years before Lombatti claims the Shroud was forged), and shares at least 12 unique features with the Shroud (see "My critique of "The Pray Codex," Wikipedia, 1 May 2011"). These include the following seven main features [my numbering in square brackets]:
"Perhaps most compelling of all is a drawing on a page of the Hungarian Pray manuscript preserved in the National Szechenyi Library, Budapest ... [Berkovits, I., "Illuminated Manuscripts in Hungary, XI-XVI Centuries," 1969, pl.III] Not only do we yet again see the awkward [1] arm crossing, this time, most unusually, Jesus is represented as [2] totally nude, exactly as on the Shroud. Again exactly as in the case of the Shroud, all four fingers on each of Jesus's hands can be seen, but [3] no thumbs. Just over Jesus's right eye there is a [4] single forehead bloodstain. Delineated in red, this is located in exactly the same position as that very distinctive reverse '3'-shaped stain on Jesus's forehead on the Shroud that we noted earlier. Exactly as in the case of the Shroud, the cloth in which Jesus is being wrapped is of [5] double body length type, the second half, as known from other versions of the same scene, extending over Joseph of Arimathea's shoulder. If all this is not enough, the cover of what appears to be the tomb is decorated with a [6] herringbone pattern in which can be seen [7] four holes in an identical arrangement to the so-called 'poker-holes' on the Shroud that we have suggested were sustained during Caliph Mu'awiyah's 'trial by fire' experiment back around 680." (Wilson, I., "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," 2010, pp.183-184).
So unless Lombatti can provide a plausible, comprehensive and point-by-point, explanation of those unique shared features on the Pray Manuscript and the Shroud (for starters), his theory that the Shroud was forged in Turkey in about 1330 must be rejected as inadequate.
Not only is the Turin Shroud probably a medieval fake but it is just one of an astonishing 40 so-called burial cloths of Jesus, according to an eminent church historian. Note the qualification "probably." For the Shroud to be proved to be "a medieval fake" Lombatti (or his ilk) would have to:
- Prove conclusively that it could not have been the burial sheet of Jesus;
- Provide a convincing counter explanation of all the positive evidence for the Shroud's authenticity (e.g. the fifteen Vignon markings found on the Shroud and on Byzantine icons dating back to the 6th century; the Shroud image's major characteristics, including its photographic negativity centuries before photography was invented, its three-dimensionality, its extreme superficiality, its non-directionality; its anatomical accuracy centuries before that anatomical knowledge existed; the bloodclots that would have adhered to both the cloth and the body are unbroken; xray images of teeth and finger bones; the perfect fit of bloodstains on the back of the head with those on the Sudarium of Oviedo, which has been held in obscurity within a reliquary chest in Oviedo, Spain since at least 840, etc);
- Identify the forger and explain how he forged the Shroud image; and
- Duplicate the Shroud image on linen, complete with all its major features, using knowledge and technology only available in the 14th century or before.
And also note Lombatti's false claim that these forty (plus) copies of the Shroud were "so-called burial cloths of Jesus." They would only be that if they all were claimed to be the original, but as we shall see below, most (if not all) of them were only claimed to be copies of the original Shroud of Turin (as it was later called).
Moreover, note Lombatti's fallacious reasoning that because there are forty known copies of the Shroud (actually there are many more than that, which I didn't realise - see below), therefore the original they were all copied from, must itself be "a medieval fake." But if that were the case, then the "dozens of the surviving replicas of the" Mona Lisa, would mean the original Mona Lisa would also have to be a fake!:
"The REAL face of Mona Lisa: First copy of da Vinci masterpiece reveals she had sculpted eyebrows and was more plump," Daily Mail," Nazia Parveen, 2 February 2012. The earliest copy of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, Mona Lisa, has been found in the vaults of a Spanish museum, looking younger and more ravishing than the original. Art historians have hailed the discovery, made during conservation work at the Prado Museum, as one of the most remarkable in recent times. Museum officials said it was almost certainly painted by one of Leonardo da Vinci's apprentices alongside the master himself as he did the original ... There are dozens of the surviving replicas of the masterpiece from the 16th and 17th centuries ...
Antonio Lombatti said the false shrouds circulated in the Middle Ages, but most of them were later destroyed. First, a copy of something is not necessarily "false." A copy would only be false if it was claimed to be the original but was not. But again see below that many (if not most) of those so-called "false shrouds" had stated on them that they were "derived from the original" - the Shroud.
There is nothing new in this claim by Lombatti that there are many copies of the Shroud. In 2004 a paper by a Daniel Duque Torres, who had made a special study of Shroud copies, was published in the British Society of the Turin Shroud Newsletter:
"There are copies [of the Shroud of Turin] the same size as the original, some very small ones (just 10 cm long), others with the spear and nail wounds in different positions, some with a crown of thorns and others without it, some from the same workshop and others absolutely anonymous. Some have texts written on (in Latin, French, Spanish and Italian) etc, ... [in] the eighteenth century ... a copy was made without permission of the House of Savoy, painted from another copy that had been given to Charles II, king of Spain. Another copy was made from the second one. The Savoy family encouraged the tradition to such an extent that Princess Francisca Maria Apollonia spent long periods of her leisure time painting copies of the Shroud that were then distributed according to specific requests or simple friendship. ... many copies made in the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth were given to the royal family and nobility of Spain ... Many of the copies from this time were produced in Chambéry, where the original was kept until 1578. However, in the second half of the seventeenth century and all through the eighteenth, most copies stayed in Italy ... copies were made for the other side of the Atlantic (Argentina and Mexico) ... There are earlier copies in France, although most probably based on the Besançon shroud. ... When we know the date of a copy we can sometimes attribute it to a specific painter or even relate it to another copy which has since been lost. Such is the case of the copy kept in Pamplona, Spain, painted in 1571. This copy was only discovered recently and we can confidently state that it is the "twin" of the copy in Alcoy (Alicante), Spain, also painted in 1571. ... A similar relationship can be established for the famous Lierre (Belgium) copy, painted in 1516, once attributed to Durero but more probably the work of Bernard van Orley, and the copy held today by the National Museum of Ancient Art in Xábregas, Lisbon (Portugal), painted in the early sixteenth century. The Emperor Maximilian of Austria had requested both. There are documents which suggest that the Lierre copy was ordered by Margarita of Austria, Duchess of Savoy, when she moved the court from Malinas to Brussels ... There are two things that can be seen on Shroud copies – the texts, informing us of where and when it was made or reminding us of what the original is, and the image painted onto the cloth. ... There are various ways that this is explained on the copies, either telling people what it is or simply confirming the authenticity of the copy. Sentences such as ... the most common "Extractum ex originali", on numerous copies dating from the 17th century, when more copies were made than in any other century. Most copies were touched to the original, excepting of course those made fraudulently from other copies without the owner's permission. In this way a secondary relic "ad tactum" was created. This is evident from the cloth of many copies, on which a sentence to the effect of "touched to the original" was written in different languages ... If a date is given on the copy, it is usually just the year, although sometimes we can find the day and month, even the date when the copy was touched to the original. ... Given that the painters in question tried unsuccessfully to recreate the "impossible" Shroud image as realistically as they could, the result has never really been valued from an artistic point of view ... the aim was not so much to paint a beautiful image as to recall the original with pious intentions. One notable exception to this is the copy in the Descalzas Reales (Madrid, Spain, unknown date), painted with clearly artistic intentions. ... Fantino, Conti, Bocciardo, Princess Francisca María Apollonia and a priest at the church of Chambéry were all painters who at one time or another decided to copy the object that had caught their attention and yet which turned out to be so difficult to copy exactly ... Not taking into account the 19th and 20th centuries, and bearing in mind that there are another 40 copies known to have been made but never found ... we can state that 130 copies are known to have been produced. This number will no doubt keep growing as new copies come to light." ("Shroud Copies," Daniel Duque Torres, British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, No. 59, June 2004).
As can be seen above, many (if not most) of these copies of the Shroud state on them that that they are copies of the Shroud, including who was the artist, the date they were copied, and for whom they were copied. If Lombatti has included in his "at least 40" copies of the Shroud any of these which state they are copies of the Shroud, then again he is misleading his readers by giving the impression that these were all independent originals in competition with the Shroud.
One of the most famous copies of the Shroud which was destroyed in the French Revolution was the Besançon shroud. Another famous copy that has survived is the Lier shroud of 1516. None of these `shrouds' claimed to be "burial cloths of Jesus," they all post-date the undisputed c.1355 date of the Shroud, are all grossly inferior to the Shroud and all lack the Shroud's unique major features (e.g. photographic negativity, three-dimensional, extreme superficiality, lack of directionality, etc). If Lombatti did not clearly point out to his readers in his journal article (see below) the uniqueness of the Shroud of Turin compared to these forty copies of it (and going by his media statement he didn't), then he would have misled his readers (if not himself).
He said the Turin Shroud itself – showing an image of a bearded man and venerated for centuries as Christ's burial cloth – appears to have originated in Turkey some 1,300 years after the Crucifixion. Note Lombatti's qualification "appears" in addition to his earlier qualification "probably"! Clearly Lombatti does not know but is just speculating. Otherwise, he needs to state: Who was this early 14th century Turkish artistic genius who created the Shroud? How did he do it? Where are the other examples of his work? Where are the contemporary references to him and his Shroud?
Lombatti, of the Università Popolare in Parma, Italy, cited work by a 19th century French historian who had studied surviving medieval documents. Is that all? Why doesn't Lombatti name this "19th century French historian" in this article and these "medieval documents"? Lombatti's paper is in Italian, but presumably Italian Shroud pro-authenticity theorists will in due course critique it in English.
From his website Lombatti appears to be a professional skeptic and debunker (an Italian version of Joe Nickell), using Nickell's favourite "guilt by association" technique, lumping "the 'Shroud of Turin'" with "The 'da Vinci Code'" into the same category called by him "fantarchaeology":
Pseudoscienze Bibliche e False Reliquie di Antonio Lombatti (Biblical and pseudo False Relics Antonio Lombatti) We're living in an age of "fantarchaeology": apocryphal gospels which supposedly conceal the real essence of Christianity; alledged [sic] conspiracies by the Knights Templar; pseudo-historical books that falsify sources and confuse the results of relevant research. Along with these there are botched newfangled translations of ancient texts, unverified rubbish, and meaningless legends which are presented as if they were the only authentic historical interpretation. In short, from the 'Shroud of Turin' to The 'da Vinci Code', from the 'Tomb of Jesus' to 'Noah's Ark', from the 'Templars' to the 'Holy Grail': you'll find here reliable facts. Even if they are unpopular.
But in this Lombatti is being either dishonest or ignorant, comparing the painstaking research of Shroud pro-authenticists like Ian Wilson with the fiction-masquerading-as-fact of Dan Brown.
`The Turin Shroud is only one of the many burial cloths which were circulating in the Christian world during the Middle Ages. There were at least 40,' said Lombatti. Again this is a false statement by Lombatti that these were "burial cloths." They were only copies of one original "burial cloth" - the Shroud of Turin (as it was later called). They self-evidently could not be burial cloths because their images were obviously painted. `Most of them were destroyed during the French Revolution. Some had images, others had blood-like stains, and others were completely white.' So Lombatti is lumping the Shroud of Turin with its photographic negative, three-dimensional, front and back image of a crucified Jesus, and real blood stains, with cloths that only "Some had images, others had blood-like stains, and others were completely white"!
And again, as already pointed out, Lombatti misleads his readers by not informing them of the many unique features of the Shroud compared to these "at least 40" grossly inferior copies of it.
The Turin Shroud is a linen cloth, about 14ft by 4ft, bearing a front and back view of the image of a bearded, naked man who appears to have been stabbed or tortured. And that's only for starters! And how many of Lombatti's "at least 40 ... burial cloths" were the full "about 14ft by 4ft, bearing a front and back ... image"?
Ever since the detail on the cloth was revealed by negative photography in the late 19th century it has attracted thousands of pilgrims to the Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Turin. Yes, "negative photography"! How many of Lombatti's "at least 40 ... burial cloths" had a photographic negative image? Only one-the Shroud of Turin!
In a research paper to be published this month in the scholarly journal Studi Medievali, Lombatti says the shroud was most likely given to French knight Geoffroy de Charny as a memento from a crusade to Smyrna, Turkey, in 1346. Again, note the speculative "most likely" to be added to Lombatti's previous qualification, "appears" and "probably"! Presumably Lombatti has no hard evidence of his claim otherwise he would have cited it in this article.
It is well known that Geoffroy de Charny I (c. 1300–1356) was part of a crusade that fought in Smyrna, Turkey, in 1346, but there is no evidence that he acquired the Shroud then:
"While the fate of Smyrna was still in the balance, a French nobleman, Humbert II, Dauphin of Vienne, announced his wish to go on a crusade. He was a weak though pious man, who succeeded in persuading the pope to give his crusade his blessing. After some indecision on the part of the pope, it was decided to send Humbert and his army to supplement the Christian effort at Smyrna. He set out from Marseilles with a company of knights and priests, which included Geoffrey de Charny the Elder, in May 1345 and reached Smyrna the following year. His army defeated the Turks in a battle outside the walls, but by 1347 the expedition had returned to France. The whole thing had been a singularly pointless exercise, but its importance lies in the theory advanced by some students of the Shroud's history, that Geoffrey de Charny obtained it in the course of the campaign. It must be said that there is singularly little evidence to support this theory, but as it has been recently repeated in a reputable article on the Shroud, I should mention it." (Currer-Briggs, N., "The Shroud and the Grail," 1987, p.48).
Besides, it is one thing to claim that in 1346 Geoffrey de Charny I obtained the Shroud in Smyrna (even though there is no evidence he did); and quite another to claim that the Shroud "originated in Turkey" about 1,330. The former is not inconsistent with the Vignon markings evidence that the Shroud existed in at least the 6th century, and the Pray Manuscript evidence that the Shroud was in Constantinople before 1192-95, but the latter is.
The de Charny family are the first recorded owners of the shroud. There is no space to go into it, but it is more likely that Geoffrey de Charny I's wife Jeanne de Vergy was the actual owner of the Shroud.
Lombatti found that Geoffroy was unable to join a pilgrimage to Jerusalem after liberating Smyrna, so he was given the shroud as a symbol of his participation in the crusade to Turkey. Why would Geoffrey de Charny I be given the Shroud just because he was unable to join a pilgrimage to Jerusalem? Also, if he was given the Shroud in this legitimate way, why was it such a surprise when he exhibited it in Lirey in c.1355 and why did he and his son Geoffrey II never give a straight answer as how they came to own the Shroud?
The Catholic Church has never officially commented on the shroud's authenticity, but has made samples available to scientists for testing. Although the "Catholic Church" has never officially claimed the Shroud to be authentic, most (if not all) Popes since the 14th century seem to have personally regarded it to be. Including the current Pope Benedict Benedict XVI, has made it clear that he regards the Shroud as authentic.
In 2009 a Vatican researcher said she had found the words `Jesus Nazarene' on the cloth, This was Barbara Frale, but most of her fellow Shroud pro-authenticists (including me and Ian Wilson - see http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n73part5.pdf) regard her claims as false (if not fraudulent designed to sell her book):
"Once again we are being bombarded by media claims about the Shroud of Turin, although this time admittedly from a pro-authenticity position by researcher Barbara Frale ... Frale claims she has `discovered' inscriptions on the Shroud that prove it is authentic. However, she is basing her conclusions on the work done by French researchers Marion and Courage (published in the late 1990's) which made these same claims. Rather than submitting her work to a journal that could review and verify her research, she ... is publishing her work in a commercial book (and only in Italian). In fact, the recent press coverage seems to be mainly designed to promote the sale of that book. Once again, we are seeing `science' reported by press releases rather than in the conventional scientific literature." ("Science by Press Release (Again). Another Editorial Response by Barrie Schwortz," Shroud.com, 21 November 2009).But nevertheless it is the Shroud of Turin which is the focus of ongoing interest, not the many copies of it which still exist today. This alone refutes Lombatti's claim that the Shroud of Turin is just one of many "so-called burial cloths of Jesus" which "circulated in the Middle Ages". Indeed Lombatti tacitly refutes it himself by focusing on the Shroud of Turin and not any of the other Shroud copies.
while two years later Italian government researchers claimed the image of a man had been caused by a supernatural `flash of light'. This was the Italian ENEA report that the Shroud's image could only be replicated by an excimer ultraviolet laser. See my post "Italian study claims Turin Shroud is Christ's authentic burial robe." While the ENEA scientists did not use the word "supernatural," that is the only explanation of how a dead body generated the equivalent of "34 thousand billion watts" of light-energy to "reproduce the entire Shroud image":
"However, ENEA scientists warn, `it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts)" (Tosatti, M., "The Shroud is Not a Fake," The Vatican Insider, 12 December 2011).
But carbon tests carried out in Oxford in 1988 firmly dated the material to 1260-1390. It wasn't only the Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory but also two others at Tucson, Arizona and Zurich, Switzerland. But because of the overwhelming weight of evidence that the Shroud was in existence from at least the 6th century, the 1988 radiocarbon dating of a single, tiny, unrepresentative, sample of the Shroud to "AD 1260-1390" simply has to be wrong! [See my "The 1260-1390 radiocarbon date of the Turin Shroud was the result of a computer hacking"] Indeed the very fact that three major radiocarbon dating laboratories requested that they be allowed to date the Shroud of Turin, and not any other of Lombatti's "40 so-called burial cloths of Jesus" gives the lie to Lombatti's claim that the Shroud is just another of the many "false shrouds [which] circulated in the Middle Ages"!
Posted 15 June 2012. Updated 1 July 2024.
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128 comments:
Hi Stephen,
WELL documented and articulated rebuttal of lamentable Church Hirorian AL's unashamed claim. I myself had to rply to his assertions, questions and comments. You can read them on Dan's Blog. On the latter's blog you'll find many post of mine on the Pray Ms miniature. Methink you'll much benefit from reading them...
Max
>WELL documented and articulated rebuttal of lamentable Church Hirorian AL's unashamed claim.
Thanks.
>I myself had to rply to his assertions, questions and comments.
I expect there will be many pro-authenticity responses, including by English-writing Italians who can read his paper in the journal Studi Medievali.
>You can read them on Dan's Blog.
Sorry, but I don't normally read comments on Dan's blog.
>On the latter's blog you'll find many post of mine on the Pray Ms miniature.
Great.
>Methink you'll much benefit from reading them...
As I don't normally read Dan's blog, I will have to miss out on that benefit.
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. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.
Superb critique Stephen.
Speaking of Dan's blog, I have been debating the Pray Manuscript with Colin Berry. A significant development was that after much prompting I got him to admit that the two red streaks on the shroud were in fact blood. This is a significant victory, because as I pointed out to him it is unknown for art of that period and even up to at least the 14th-15th centuries, for images to show blood on the shroud in entombment scenes. This is further evidence that the manuscript is based on a viewing of the shroud.
He's still saying that the 4 circles in a one-off, assymmetrical L shaped pattern are just a random decorative motif though, which just defies logic as far as I am concerned!
Matt
>Superb critique Stephen.
Thanks.
>Speaking of Dan's blog, I have been debating the Pray Manuscript with Colin Berry.
Great! I only get Dan's posts, not his comments, so I am blissfully unaware of that debate.
>A significant development was that after much prompting I got him to admit that the two red streaks on the shroud were in fact blood.
There is hope for him yet! As you state below it is a major concession for a Shroud anti-authenticist to admit that the blood on the Shroud is real blood (see below).
I have just responded in a comment under my post, "Shroud of Turin: Burial sheet of Jesus!: #9 The man has wounds and bloodstains matching the Gospels' description of the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus Christ") to a private message to Gio which is about the blood on the Shroud soaking through to the underside, which I presume was based on comments on Dan's blog by Colin.
>This is a significant victory, because as I pointed out to him it is unknown for art of that period and even up to at least the 14th-15th centuries, for images to show blood on the shroud in entombment scenes.
Indeed it is "a significant victory," which was resisted by Walter McCrone to his dying day. He knew that no medieval forger would use real blood in painting the Shroud. Apart from the fact that real blood normally turns black (the Shroud's blood is red because of the bile pigment bilirubin, which is a response to massive physical trauma), there is the inherent difficulty (not to mention repugnance) of painting with blood.
And real blood on the Shroud makes hot statue/bas relief methods unviable because the blood was on the Shroud before the image and so would be cooked if the blood-soaked linen cloth was placed over the hot statue/bas relief.
>This is further evidence that the manuscript is based on a viewing of the shroud.
Sorry, but it is unclear to me why there being "two red streaks on the shroud" (there are a lot more than that) is "further evidence that the [Pray] manuscript is based on a viewing of the shroud.
>He's still saying that the 4 circles in a one-off, assymmetrical L shaped pattern are just a random decorative motif though, which just defies logic as far as I am concerned!
Like most (if not all) non-Christian Shroud anti-authenticists, Colin is afraid to accept evidence that would point to the Shroud being authentic, because they rightly sense that it would be a `slippery slope' down (actually up!) the path of them becoming Christians.
As the agnostic Professor of Anatomy at the Sorbonne, Yves Delage, responded to his fellow atheist/agnostic members of the French Academy of Sciences, who attacked and ridiculed him for reading a paper to them in 1902 arguing that the Shroud was authentic, `if it was anyone but Christ, the evidence would be accepted':
"If, instead of Christ, there were a question of some person like a Sargon, an Achilles or one of the Pharaohs, no one would have thought of making any objection ... I have been faithful to the true spirit of science in treating this question, intent only on the truth, not concerned in the least whether it would affect the interests of any religious party ... I recognize Christ as a historical personage and I see no reason why anyone should be scandalized that there still exist material traces of his earthly life.'" (Walsh, J.E., "The Shroud," 1963, pp.106-107).
But as Colin the scientist knows, refusing to accept evidence because one doesn't like it for personal reasons, is the very antithesis of science.
The true scientific attitude is to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen
I should clarify that when I am referring to two red streaks on the shroud, I am referring to the shroud as shown on the Pray Manuscript image. Sorry for not articulating that clearly.
Colin didn't admit to real blood on the real shroud, rather he admitted the two red streaks on the object in the Pray Manuscript image which he thinks is the sarcophagus lid and we think is the shroud, represent blood.
I think this is significant. As I say,in the history of the art of Jesus's entombment there is very little evidence of blood on Jesus's discarded cloths / shroud. Almost always the cloths / shroud are unblemished. I think that the Pray Manuscript artist shows two red streaks representing a bloodied shroud is therefore very significant.
My interpretation is that the two red streaks represent the two long streaks of blood on the arms of Jesus in the real shroud. In my view this is all stacking up very nicely, as the two long streaks of blood on the arms in the real shroud, and the L shaped poker holes, are two of the most prominent features.
Matt
>I should clarify that when I am referring to two red streaks on the shroud, I am referring to the shroud as shown on the Pray Manuscript image. Sorry for not articulating that clearly.
OK.
>Colin didn't admit to real blood on the real shroud, rather he admitted the two red streaks on the object in the Pray Manuscript image which he thinks is the sarcophagus lid and we think is the shroud, represent blood.
That explains it. But it is still a problem for him, because the Pray Manuscript was created in 1192-95 and the artist depicted blood, including a mark exactly where the reversed 3 bloodstain is on the Shroud.
>I think this is significant. As I say,in the history of the art of Jesus's entombment there is very little evidence of blood on Jesus's discarded cloths / shroud. Almost always the cloths / shroud are unblemished.
Agreed. The Byzantine artists used the Shroud image to depict Jesus as living and ruling (which is what "Pantocrator" means). So it is very significant that the Pray Manuscript depicted Jesus nude and with bloodstains, as He is on the Shroud.
>I think that the Pray Manuscript artist shows two red streaks representing a bloodied shroud is therefore very significant.
By the other red streak, apart from the reversed 3, I thought you meant the crown of thorns mark(s) in Jesus' hair on plate III (but see below). There are also red marks on Jesus' hands and right side on plate IV, corresponding to the nail wound and the spear wound bloodstains on the Shroud, although the left hand is covered by the right hand on the Shroud.
But most significantly, equivalent to the L-shaped `poker holes', Jesus' right hand on plate IV has the red nail wound mark on Jesus' wrist, exactly where it is on the Shroud! See my JPG of it in my 2010, "The Pray Manuscript." The significance of this is actually strengthened by the fact the Pray Manuscript artist depicted the nail wound on the left hand of plate IV, which is covered by the right hand on the Shroud, in the palm as it traditionally is depicted by medieval artists. I am going to insert this as point 5 in "My critique of `The Pray Codex,' Wikipedia, 1 May 2011, making 13 points (14 if the crown of thorns bloodstains are also inserted). I will also add an image of plate IV to that page.
>My interpretation is that the two red streaks represent the two long streaks of blood on the arms of Jesus in the real shroud.
I cannot see those "two red streaks" on plate III of my copy of Berkowitz.
>In my view this is all stacking up very nicely, as the two long streaks of blood on the arms in the real shroud, and the L shaped poker holes, are two of the most prominent features.
And the nail bloodstain in the wrist of Jesus' right hand of plate IV, exactly as it is on the Shroud, contrary to the traditional crucifix depiction of the nails being in Jesus' palms, as they are on Jesus' left hand in plate IV!
[continued]
[continued]
BTW Colin a few hours ago tried to post here a substandard comment (which I deleted as per my stated policy) about my "travesty of a blog site and of blogging" and in which he threatened, "I am minded to report you to Blogger Blogspot for your abuse of the medium" and my "sticking your simplistic labels on me." And because my "modus operandi here is highly obnoxious"!
He also complained about you, so presumably it was about me wrongly assuming you meant he had admitted there were bloodstains on the Shroud.
It seems Colin's twice calling me "a boil on the bum of the blogosphere" is not him "sticking a simplistic label" on me!
Colin, in the unlikely event you carried out your threat to report me to Blogger, for me using the very tools Blogger provides its blog Moderators to protect their blogs from wreckers, and in the even more unlikely event Blogger took any notice of your complaint, after even a cursory investigation they would no doubt remind you of the legal maxim, "He who comes into equity must come with clean hands."
But to help you make your complaint, here is a suggested pro-forma for you to use:
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Dear Blogger,
I wish to report Stephen Jones for refusing to let me make "off-topic, offensive or sub-standard" comments to his The Shroud of Turin blog.
I have already told him twice that he is "a boil on the bum of the blogosphere" but he hasn't taken any notice.
Can you please take away his Moderator's power to delete my nasty posts?
Yours scientifically,
Colin Berry
-----------------------------------
All jokes aside Colin, you are entitled to correct here any misrepresentation (unintentional) of your position, but you must do it within my stated policies and without your usual nastiness. Otherwise your comments won't appear.
Stephen E. Jones
>I cannot see those "two red streaks" on plate III of my copy of Berkowitz.
I'm talking abut the two parallel red streaks on the image at the bottom of Plate 3, near the angel's foot, on the herringbone weave patterned object. The red streaks are next to cross motifs which I believe symbolise the image of Jesus on the real shroud.
So, to sum up, what I interpret in the lower image of plate 3:
- There is the herringbone weave patterned shroud (whether it is the shroud by itself or the shroud on top of a sarcophagus lid is fairly inconsequential)
- On this representation of the shroud are crosses in its central area, to the right of the angel's foot. These crosses represent the image of Jesus on the Shroud
- Immediately to the left of the crosses, just under the angel's foot, are two red streaks, which represent the blood marks on the shroud, possibly the two most prominent streaks of blood on Jesus's arms. The streaks are shown as the artist is moving progressively to showing Jesus's wounds and pain, from the small blood marks on the head in the upper image of Plate 3, to the more prominent red streaks in the lower image, to the blatant wounds on Jesus in Plate 4
- Then to the right of the crosses and slightly overlapping them is the head cloth of Jesus, which is connected to the image of Jesus's head on Mary's sleeve. Colin Berry thinks this is the shroud.Note the original Greek of the Bible uses a word equivalent to "entwined" for the head cloth, rather than the commonly used word "Folded" in English translations. To my eye at least the head cloth looks entwined
- Then to the right of this are the 4 circles which we interpret as the poker holes. Their placement is consistent with their placement on the real shroud just to the side of Jesus's image
Stephen I got an interesting book on the Christian World in the Middle Ages, I found an image from the 11th century, a fresco from the church of San Clemente, Rome. It depicts scenes from the life of St Alexius, who lived in the fifth century, and interestingly was based in Edessa.
In this image, St Alexius is praying over a sick girl, but look at the object by his right side. It looks suspiciously like a representation of the Shroud of Turin, although it is a bit hard to decipher the detail. At the very least, it is Jesus's full length image on "something".
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/4641534107/
Thoughts???
Matt
Matt: it is a before-and-after scene, so the saint appears twice, and likewise so does the sick girl, probably at death's door (your "Christ")on the left restored to health on the right.
Note the duplication of all the key figures.
this image in the same fresco series is also interesting:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/San_clemente_fresco.jpg
St Alexius at the right is on a pulpit, there is a shroud-like object just to his right, which seems to have been "scrubbed out". Is this another representation of the shroud, which may have been viewed by authorities as "idol worship". Not sure. Would be interesting if an Italian speaking person could pursue this
Sciencebod
You MIGHT be right, although the lack of clarity on the object I thought might have been the shroud doesn't help. I swear I can see a faint image of Jesus's face on the object I thought was the shroud, but that might be just my imagination! But a possible interpretation could still be that the saint is praying to Jesus on the shroud, and that results in the girl's healing, which he then sees in person (maybe the guys on the horses to the left brought the shroud?). Note in the following fresco image which Stephen has just posted for me, that the girl is being carried towards the saint at a pulpit, as I mentioned there is a cloth like object just to his right on the pulpit which is largely scrubbed out. There is a corner of what looks like a golden circular halo, which might have been Jesus's face with halo on the shroud. This would make sense as the saint is giving thanks to Jesus on the shroud that he prayed to, giving effect to the girl's healing
>But most significantly, equivalent to the L-shaped `poker holes', Jesus' right hand on plate IV has the red nail wound mark on Jesus' wrist, exactly where it is on the Shroud! See my JPG of it in my 2010, "The Pray Manuscript." The significance of this is actually strengthened by the fact the Pray Manuscript artist depicted the nail wound on the left hand of plate IV, which is covered by the right hand on the Shroud, in the palm as it traditionally is depicted by medieval artists. I am going to insert this as point 5 in "My critique of `The Pray Codex,' Wikipedia, 1 May 2011, making 13 points (14 if the crown of thorns bloodstains are also inserted). I will also add an image of plate IV to that page.
I have now added to my latter post:
----------------------------------
The nail bloodstain in Jesus' right wrist on Plate IV, is exactly where it is on the Shroud (see below)! The significance of this is further
[Above (click to enlarge): Nail bloodstain in Jesus' right wrist (Berkovits, 1969, Plate IV) compared with that of the Shroud (ShroudScope).]
strengthened by the fact the Pray Manuscript artist depicted the nail wound on the left hand of plate IV (which is covered by the right hand on the Shroud) in the palm, as it was traditionally depicted by medieval artists. This is at least equal to the L-shaped `poker holes' (see below) in being proof beyond reasonable doubt that the Pray Manuscript artist worked directly from the Shroud!
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Stephen E. Jones
Matt
>Sciencebod
You MIGHT be right, although the lack of clarity on the object I thought might have been the shroud doesn't help.
Colin responded with a substandard post so, in accordance with my stated policy, I deleted it.
I am aseriously considering banning Colin Berry/Sciencebod permanently from commenting on this my The Shroud of Turin blog for his repeated attempts to flout my stated policies. My time is too scarce to waste it on his childish games.
If I do ban Colin, no comment by him will appear, even if it complies with my policies.
The only exception then would be a publishable apology by Colin and an undertaking by him that he will from then on comply with my stated policies. He could then resume commenting here, but then one more breach of my stated policies by Colin and he would never be able to comment here again. Full stop.
So Colin/Sciencebod, the ball is in your court. This is your first and final warning. From now on, if I have to delete one more of your comments because it does not comply with my stated policies, I will ban you permanently.
In that case you will never be able to comment again on this my The Shroud of Turin blog, except as stated above.
Think very carefully before you dash off an angry reply because it would be your last here.
Stephen E. Jones
-----------------------------------
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. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.
>So Colin/Sciencebod, the ball is in your court. This is your first and final warning. From now on, if I have to delete one more of your comments because it does not comply with my stated policies, I will ban you permanently.
Colin responded with a substandard comment so he is now permanently banned from commenting on this my The Shroud of Turin blog.
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen:
Duplicate the Shroud image on linen, complete with all its major features, using knowledge and technology only available in the 14th century or before.
Heck, it would be a start if anyone could even duplicate all of the Shroud's major features with 21st century technology!
BTW Colin a few hours ago tried to post here a substandard comment (which I deleted as per my stated policy) about my "travesty of a blog site and of blogging" and in which he threatened, "I am minded to report you to Blogger Blogspot for your abuse of the medium" and my "sticking your simplistic labels on me." And because my "modus operandi here is highly obnoxious"!
He seriously thinks that Blogger is going to shut down a blog because of moderator choices he doesn't like? Colin is not altogether sane, I'm sorry to say.
Matt
>>I cannot see those "two red streaks" on plate III of my copy of Berkowitz.
>I'm talking abut the two parallel red streaks on the image at the bottom of Plate 3, near the angel's foot, on the herringbone weave patterned object. The red streaks are next to cross motifs which I believe symbolise the image of Jesus on the real shroud.
Thanks, it wasn't that I couldn't see them, I just assumed they were part of the decorative motifs, like the red crosses (which themselves must represent Jesus' blood).
Now having `seen' them, I agree that the two red zig-zag lines running diagonally down from the angel's foot were meant by the PM's artist to represent Jesus' blood. But I don't think they are specific enough to include in the 12 points of congrence I listed between the PM and the Shroud in my "My critique of "The Pray Codex," Wikipedia, 1 May 2011".
>So, to sum up, what I interpret in the lower image of plate 3:
>
>- There is the herringbone weave patterned shroud
Agreed.
>(whether it is the shroud by itself or the shroud on top of a sarcophagus lid is fairly inconsequential)
Agreed, except it does help explain why the Shroud itself with its image is not directly depicted, i.e. the artist, presumably because he was forbidden by the Constantinople authorities from depicting the Shroud and its image directly, depicted it symbolically.
>- On this representation of the shroud are crosses in its central area, to the right of the angel's foot. These crosses represent the image of Jesus on the Shroud
I interpret them as Jesus' blood on the herringbone weave of the Shroud. Or more likely (as it just occurred to me) the flagrum marks which covered Jesus' back on the Shroud image. But it would be impossible to prove this beyond reasonable doubt, so I will not add this to my 12 points of congruence between the PM and the Shroud.
>- Immediately to the left of the crosses, just under the angel's foot, are two red streaks, which represent the blood marks on the shroud, possibly the two most prominent streaks of blood on Jesus's arms. The streaks are shown as the artist is moving progressively to showing Jesus's wounds and pain, from the small blood marks on the head in the upper image of Plate 3, to the more prominent red streaks in the lower image, to the blatant wounds on Jesus in Plate 4
I agree that "the two red streaks ... represent the blood marks on the shroud" but I would go as far as to say that they represent "the two most prominent streaks of blood on Jesus's arms."
>- Then to the right of the crosses and slightly overlapping them is the head cloth of Jesus, which is connected to the image of Jesus's head on Mary's sleeve.
I interpret this as Jesus head in profile, the nearest to a direct depiction of the image of the Shroud on the PM.
The artist might have interpreted sudarion in Jn 20:7 as a chin-band (as most pro-Shroud authenticists did until the discovery of the Sudarium of Oviedo), in which case your "the head cloth of Jesus" would be represented by the strips about the neck of the empty garment that the angel is pointing to.
[continued]
[continued]
>Colin Berry thinks this is the shroud.Note the original Greek of the Bible uses a word equivalent to "entwined" for the head cloth, rather than the commonly used word "Folded" in English translations. To my eye at least the head cloth looks entwined
See above what I interpret it to be.
On "entwined" look at "Shroud Report Interview with Mark Guscin on the Sudarium of Oviedo" at "Shroud University Library."
>- Then to the right of this are the 4 circles which we interpret as the poker holes. Their placement is consistent with their placement on the real shroud just to the side of Jesus's image
Agreed.
Stephen E. Jones
The Deuce
>He seriously thinks that Blogger is going to shut down a blog because of moderator choices he doesn't like?
I doubt that Colin seriously thought that. It was just bluff and bluster by him.
>Colin is not altogether sane, I'm sorry to say.
I don't think Colin is not "sane" but I do think he has got problems.
Maybe its just a bad case of God-itis!
Whatever, I encountered his type of nasty atheist/agnostic/anti-Christian on my now closed Creation/Evolution/Design Yahoo discussion group and so when I started each of my blogs, I set up stated policies on them to deal with their wrecking tactics.
Stephen E. Jones
>Colin responded with a substandard comment so he is now permanently banned from commenting on this my The Shroud of Turin blog.
Closely following Colin's banning a new commenter with the pseudonym "Sceptic of the Pray Codex argument" tried to make a comment.
I suspect it was from Colin, but I considered it to be substandard anyway, so I deleted it.
One thing that made me suspect it was from Colin is the British spelling "Sceptic."
Obviously Colin can attempt to post here under a pseudonym but: 1) if his comments are substandard they will be deleted; and 2) if they are posted, Colin Berry/Sciencebod won't get the credit.
Stephen E. Jones
-----------------------------------
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. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.
Colin has stated several times that he thinks the pray codex is an inconsequential distraction, given that it is strange he spends so much time trying to debunk it
Stephen
Any thought on the St Alexius frescoes?
I can't dig up much more. Apparently one of the classic texts of early Italian literature is the "Ritmo di Sant'Alessio" which tells the story of his legend. This might reveal the meaning behind these scenes. As far as I can tell from google though, I can't find any English translation. Do you have any Italian Shroud enthusiasts who may be able to help? If it is a classic of early Italian literature I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to find.
Please let me know if you think I am barking up the wrong tree with this.
OK, found this:
http://www.courseportfolio.org/peer/potfolioFiles/anonF/shopkow-l-2003-1/alexis.htm
it's a version of the legend. I now think that St Alexius is lying in the bed at the far right, the man in the yellow robes who we see twice is the pope, the woman consoling the person in the bed (who is St Alexius) is his wife, with his mother and father behind her.
Now I think the object I thought might be the shroud is actually St Alexius after he dies, so the fresco story works from the far left, with the men on horses, then to the far right with the bed scene, then the middle scene which is the pope taking the "Charter" from St Alexius.
But it wsn't a total waste of time. Refer to paragraph 18 which mentions that the saint went to Edessa "to see an icon that he had heard tell of", and later on the icon calls for the Saint's servant to call for St Alexius
Matt
>... I found an image from the 11th century, a fresco from the church of San Clemente, Rome. It depicts scenes from the life of St Alexius, who lived in the fifth century, and interestingly was based in Edessa.
Thanks. One of the advantages of scanning all the past issues of the BSTS Newsletter, working backwards from issues #42 of Jan 96 to #1 of Jun 92 (I finished issue #1 only two days ago), for them to eventually all appear on the BSTS section of Shroud.com, is that I have on my system a lot of little-known information on the Shroud.
For example:
"Linda Cooper `The Old French Life of Saint Alexis and the Shroud of Turin', Modern Philology [a journal devoted to research in medieval and modern literature], University of Chicago Press, August 1966, pp.1-17. The eleventh century Old French Life of Saint Alexis, generally recognized as the first masterpiece of French literature, contains the passage: Then he [Alexis] went off to the city of Edessa Because of an image he had heard tell of, Which the angels made at God's commandment... As Linda Cooper shows in this highly scholarly paper, the `image' referred to is none other than the Image of Edessa, and when the various versions of St. Alexis's life are studied, it makes a great deal of sense that this was one and the same as the Shroud. She cites, for instance, the Bollandist Vita Alexius which calls it `sine humano opere imago Domini nostri Jesu Christi in sindone' , i.e. `an image of our Lord Jesus Christ made without human work on a sindone'; also the Latin Cod. Monac. Aug. S.Ulr. 111 ... `[he came] to the city of Edessa, in which there was preserved a blood-stained image of the Lord not made by hands'. Both passages clearly refute arguments that the Image of Edessa was incompatible with the cloth we know today as the Turin Shroud." (BSTS Newsletter, No. 16, May 1987, p.14).
St. Alexius (or Alexis) lived in Edessa between 412 and 435:
"Saint Alexius or Alexis of Rome or Alexis von Edessa was an Eastern saint whose veneration was later transplanted to Rome, a process facilitated by the fact that, according to the earlier Syriac legend that a "Man of God" of Edessa, Mesopotamia who during the episcopate of Bishop Rabbula (412-435) lived by begging and shared the alms he received with other poor people was, after his death there, found to be a native of Rome." ("Alexius of Rome," Wikipedia, n 24 March 2012).
So if while St. Alexius was in Edessa between 412-435, the Shroud was there and known to be full-length (and "an image of our Lord Jesus Christ made without human work on a sindone" and "Edessa, in which there was preserved a blood-stained image of the Lord not made by hands'' can be nothing else) then that is more evidence for Ian Wilson's theory that the Image of Edessa/Mandylion and the Shroud of Turin are one and the same.
>In this image, St Alexius is praying over a sick girl, but look at the object by his right side. It looks suspiciously like a representation of the Shroud of Turin, although it is a bit hard to decipher the detail. At the very least, it is Jesus's full length image on "something".
>
>http://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/4641534107/
>
>Thoughts???
I must be artistically challenged, because I cannot see anything at St Alexius' right side.
I assume that it is St. Alexis in both scenes. In the first, on the left, he is bending over the sick girl, holding her by the hand, and waving a small piece of cloth or paper over her. In the second, on the right, he is standing and the girl has recovered.
But for the life of me I cannot see anything Shroud-like in either scene. Perhaps you can be more specific where exactly do you claim the Shroud is?
Stephen E. Jones
BTW Colin has childishly had a go at my initial interpretation on one of his websites. I am man enough to admit I was wrong. Nothing wrong in my view with investigating a possibility, reconsidering it, then admitting fault - isnt that scientific Colin? BTW his initial interpretation was also wrong.
This also shows that I am open to changing my mind if there is a better, more logical explanation. I am yet to be convinced that there is a better explanation to our shared view Stephen that the codex represents the Shroud.
I would change my mind if I was convinced by evidence to the contrary. But I am not, after repeated consideraiton and analysis! That's all I have to say anymore.
Matt
>this image in the same fresco series is also interesting:
>
>http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/San_clemente_fresco.jpg
>
St Alexius at the right is on a pulpit, there is a shroud-like object just to his right, which seems to have been "scrubbed out".
It looks like a long piece of cloth. But I cannot detect anything on it that would point unequivocally to the Shroud.
>Is this another representation of the shroud, which may have been viewed by authorities as "idol worship". Not sure.
The problem with putting forward unclear examples of what might be the Shroud is that enemies of the Shroud can use it portray us as `clutching at straws" in order to discredit the clear examples of what can only be the Shroud (e.g. the Pray Codex).
[...]
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen
Re: your 9:52 pm comment
What I thought might have been the shroud - which I have now changed my view on - was the object that the pope is bending down towards ie. the image of a person nude on the top half but covered in red robe in lower half contained in a "bubble" like object. I thought it might have been Jesus's image on a cloth (the "bubble")
As I advise in another post a few minutes ago, what we thought was the girl in the bed is actually St Alexius, being embraced by his wife (if you read the story it all makes sense)
Nevetheless, the Edessa connections are interesting!
The Deuce
>>Duplicate the Shroud image on linen, complete with all its major features, using knowledge and technology only available in the 14th century or before.
>Heck, it would be a start if anyone could even duplicate all of the Shroud's major features with 21st century technology!
Good point. It just shows how hopeless is the Shroud anti-authenticity argument!
Stephen E. Jones
Matt
>Colin has stated several times that he thinks the pray codex is an inconsequential distraction,
Presumably this was on either Dan's blog or Colin's own, because I don't recall him saying it here.
I would rather we don't talk about Colin, because: 1) it gives him a proxy voice here; 2) it could be regarded as unfair that we talk about him, but he cannot reply; and 3) it probably inflates his ego.
>given that it is strange he spends so much time trying to debunk it
As strange as atheists like Richard Dawkins who have devoted much of their life trying to disprove God who they claim doesn't exist! Although recently Dawkins has changed his tune and claimed he is not an atheist but an agnostic.
It reminds me of an atheist I debated once who claimed God was as non-existent as the Tooth Fairy. I asked him how many pro- and anti- Tooth Fairy discussion groups he knew of!
It is a case of: "The [Shroud anti-authenticist] doth protest too much, methinks." That they spend so much time and energy trying to disprove the Shroud of Turin (and not one of Lombatti's 40 copies), is a tacit acknowledgment that it is a huge threat to their secularist worldview.
Stephen E. Jones
Matt
>Any thought on the St Alexius frescoes?
See above. I remain to be convinced that the Shroud is depicted on those frescoes (or if it is it is too unclear to be of use).
But that he was in Edessa in the early 400s when the full-Shroud seems to have been known, is very interesting.
>I can't dig up much more. .. Do you have any Italian Shroud enthusiasts who may be able to help?
No. But one of them might read this and comment. Otherwise Dan Porter probably knows some.
>... Please let me know if you think I am barking up the wrong tree with this.
You might be. But see my previous comment where I would like you to point out where exactly the Shroud is on that fresco of St. Alexis healing the girl.
Stephen E. Jones
Stop Press! Vocal anti-Shroud authenticitist theorises on Dan Porter site that assymmetrical one-off L shaped motif comprised of four circles on the Pray codex image, considered by authenticitists to be the poker holes of the Shroud, may actually be a product of the artist simply testing his ink!!!!!!!!
Matt
>Stop Press! Vocal anti-Shroud authenticitist theorises on Dan Porter site that assymmetrical one-off L shaped motif comprised of four circles on the Pray codex image, considered by authenticitists to be the poker holes of the Shroud, may actually be a product of the artist simply testing his ink!!!!!!!!
Please don't cross-post such nonsense from other sites.
These `empty vessels that make the most noise' are in my opinion just attention-seekers and if Dan wants to give them a platform, I don't.
I expect this "Vocal anti-Shroud authenticitist" just wants to start a flurry of comments for his own entertainment, and I for one don't want him to use my blog by proxy for his childish games.
Stephen E. Jones
How do we know the blood is real
Anonymous
>How do we know the blood is real
Thanks for your question. Extensive chemical and microscopical tests, by the late Al Adler, whose specialty was blood chemistry, proved that "the red stuff on the Shroud is emphatically, and without any reservation, nothing else but B-L-O-O-D!":
"We began our presentation. One by one, we gave our short talks with slides, graphs, spectra, and tried to make them intelligible to the nonscientist ... We all wanted to be very careful that we did not overstate anything. We were extremely cautious to make no statement of any kind that could not be supported by the data ... Most of the questions were excellent. 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, J.H., "Report on the Shroud of Turin," 1983, pp.215-216).
Also, the Shroud bloodstains test positive for both human blood group, type AB, and also human DNA, including the human male Y-chromosome "gene amelogenin Y":
"But arguably of the greatest importance ... are studies, both in Italy and the United States, which, completely independently of each other, have identified DNA in the Shroud `blood'. On the afternoon of 21 April 1988, just a few hours after having cut off the snippets of the Shroud used for radiocarbon dating, the Italian microscopist Dr Giovanni Riggi took a 1.5 mm `blood' sample from the back-of-the-head region. In June 1993 he provided some of this sample to a visiting American microbiology professor, Dr Leoncio Garza-Valdès, who took it back for analysis at the University of Texas' Center for Advanced DNA Technologies at San Antonio, Texas. There the laboratory director, Dr Victor Tryon, and his technician wife, Nancy Mitchell Tryon, quickly established that the sample was human blood of the AB group, just as Baima-Bollone had before them. They also determined that it had both X and Y chromosomes, indicating that the individual from whom it came was male. Three unmistakable gene segments were identified, beta globin from chromosome 11, amelogenin X from chromosome X and amelogenin Y from chromosome Y, a finding quite impossible if the Shroud `blood' were merely iron oxide as contended by Walter McCrone.." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," 2000, pp.77-78).
Stephen E. Jones
Also the serum rings and hameatite crystals in scourge marks one criticism is the low levels of potasium however we must take into the account that the scourge marks are exudates of blood clots not liquid blood stains as evidenced by the serum halos only visible in UV light. Chidi
Chidi
>Also the ... serum halos only visible in UV light.
Thanks. I had forgotten the serum halo evidence:
"The Bloodstains The `blood' areas on the Shroud have attracted considerable attention since the first color photographs of the cloth became available. It appeared that blood had flowed from the man's feet, wrists, and side. ... The reddish, brown stains appear to be quite anatomically correct, as one would expect if a man had bled after being stabbed in the side and nailed through his wrists and feet. The edges of these stains are also precisely defined. If the Shroud actually covered a real corpse, one wonders how the cloth was removed without smearing and dislodging the edges of the clotted blood. When they arrived in Turin in 1978, the scientists did no know whether the `bloodstains' were really blood. ... The 1978 team hoped to settle the blood question once and for all by examining the bloodstained areas with a full battery of optical tests throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. ... The most important and conclusive work was done by John Heller and Alan Adler in their laboratory at the New England Institute. [Heller, J.H. & Adler, A.D., "Blood on the Shroud of Turin," Applied Optics, Vol. 19, 1980, pp.2742-2744] Heller and Adler examined several `sticky tape' samples which contained pieces of `bloodstained' fibrils. They looked at the spectrum of the visible light transmitted from these samples under a microscope, a test known as microspectrophotometry. The results suggested that hemoglobin was a component of the color. To further test this possibility, Heller and Adler removed the iron from the samples and tried to isolate porphyrin, a component of blood which fluoresces red under an ultraviolet light. Indeed, the substance which the chemists isolated from the samples fluoresced red under ultraviolet light. This confirmed that the substance was porphyrin, and thus strongly indicated that the bloodstained areas really were blood. A further indication that blood was present on the Shroud came from the ultraviolet fluorescence photographs taken by Vernon Miller and Samuel Pellicori. Blood itself does not fluoresce. However, when Miller and Pellicori studied their ultraviolet fluorescence photographs of the blood areas, they discovered a light fluorescent margin around the edges of several of the bloodstained areas. These areas were the side wound, the nail wound in the wrist, and the blood flow at the right foot on the dorsal image. The probable explanation for this unexpected discovery is that the fluorescent margins were blood serum, the colorless fluid part of the blood. Miller and Pellicori showed in the laboratory that blood serum on linen does fluoresce moderately. Thus, it is likely that the fluorescent margins are blood serum which had become separated from whole blood before or after the man's death. Several other tests confirmed the presence of blood on the Shroud. Protein, a component of blood, was detected in the blood areas, although no protein was found elsewhere on the cloth. X-ray fluorescence examination found that iron, a component of blood, was present in the blood area. The team's summary of research concluded that the bloodstained areas were very probably stained by real blood. [Schwalbe, L.A. & Rogers, R.N., "Physics and Chemistry of the Shroud of Turin: Summary of the 1978 Investigation," Analytica Chimica Acta, Vol. 135, 1982, pp.3-49]" (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, pp.78-80. Emphasis original).
Stephen E. Jones
The blood was originally said to be AB, and this was one of the pieces of evidence linking it to the Oviedo sudarium, also said to be be of AB blood group. Is this still the consensus view?
Query to Stephen
I don't like your pseudonym, "Query to Stephen." It suggests you created it, just to query me. I don't see my role as your or anyone's `search engine'. So please don't use that pseudonym here or I will be more likely to delete comments using it.
>The blood was originally said to be AB, and this was one of the pieces of evidence linking it to the Oviedo sudarium, also said to be be of AB blood group. Is this still the consensus view?
I don't know what is "the consensus view" but see my post "Shroud of Turin News, February 2012" where blood from a ~1300 BC mummy thought to be Egyptian King Tutankhamun's was found to be type A2 and was used by archaeologists to determine its relationship to other mummies.
So the assumption that old blood always denatures to type AB is now invalid.
Therefore, that both the Shroud and the Sudarium both have the same blood types AB, which in turn is more likely in Jews, is now significant.
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen
Just an anatomical observation on the Pray Manuscript and Shroud.
I have just noted that the chest muscles in BOTH the Pray image and the Shroud are set quite high up on the torso. Of course there is quite significant variation in chest muscle position on the male torso, with some chests set lower than others on the torso.
I was wondering if you have ever come across this observation.
Matt
>Just an anatomical observation on the Pray Manuscript and Shroud.
>
>I have just noted that the chest muscles in BOTH the Pray image and the Shroud are set quite high up on the torso.
Thanks for this observation. Looking at the Man on the Shroud in Shroudscope, particularly in the Enrie Nwgative Vertical, His chest muscles do seem abnormally high up His torso.
And in Berkovitz, plate III, the artist has depicted Jesus with what seems abnormally high chest muscles.
From the 3D information on the Shroud STURP had worked out a 3D model of the probable position was in when He died and the Cross and His body became fixed by rigor mortis.
As can be seen in this depiction of Jesusbased on STURP's model at "World Mysteries," Jesus' head was slumped forward over His chest, which would have the effect of making His chest muscles appear abnormally high on His torso.
>Of course there is quite significant variation in chest muscle position on the male torso, with some chests set lower than others on the torso.
Which is why it would be difficult to prove that this is a unique feature shared between the Shroud and the Pray Ms. Nevertheless, I do believe it is.
Of course the Shroud `sceptics' (so-called) who suffer from invincible ignorance regarding the Shroud:
"There does remain, nonetheless, a cast of mind which seems peculiarly closed to evidence. When confronted with such a mind, one feels helpless, for no amount of evidence seems to be clinching. Frequently the facts are simply ignored or brushed aside as somehow deceptive, and the principles are reaffirmed in unshakable conviction. One seems confronted with what has been called `invincible ignorance.'" (Fearnside, W.W. & Holther, W.B., "Fallacy: The Counterfeit of Argument," 1959, p.113).
will not accept the more obvious L-shaped `poker holes,' the herringbone weave and the nail in the right wrist (plate IV), as unique features shared between the Shroud and the Pray Ms, so they certainly won't accept the chest muscles being higher on both as further proof that the Pray Ms was copied from the Shroud before 1195.
>I was wondering if you have ever come across this observation.
No. It may be another of your discoveries!
Stephen E.Jones
Stephen
I do not believe the chest observation is a MAJOR similarity, but I do think it is significant. It is just another factor supporting the case.
I suggest the high chest position APPEARS abnormal. But before skeptics suggest it is anatomically abnormal and therefore evidence that the shroud is fake, the appearance of abnormality can be easily explained.
Firstly, as you have noted Stephen, if Jesus's head was bowed down slightly, this would contribute to the appearance of the chest being higher than normal.
Secondly, if you view this image which is simulating Jesus being covered in the Shroud:
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/03/30/4349690-the-face-in-the-shroud?lite
You can easily see that the main contact of the shroud over the chest would be over the top half of the chest, with limited if any contact with the bottom half of the chest. This would also explain why the chest seems higher than normal, because we don't see much image of the lower half of the chest.
Thirdly, on a lean and reasonably muscular male figure, like Jesus appeared to be, the chest position will rise up higher when the figure is reclined compared to standing stall.
Matt
>I do not believe the chest observation is a MAJOR similarity, but I do think it is significant. It is just another factor supporting the case.
Agreed. The problem may be in clearly showing that both the Shroud and the PM chest muscles are abnormally high.
>I suggest the high chest position APPEARS abnormal. But before skeptics suggest it is anatomically abnormal and therefore evidence that the shroud is fake, the appearance of abnormality can be easily explained.
If `sceptics' (i.e. true believers in the Shroud's inauthenticity claim that anatomical abnormality = fake, then they would have to admit that the genius forger made elementary artistic errors that even an amateur artist wouldn't make.
But some degree of apparent anatomical abnormality would be expected of Jesus' body having become `frozen' by rigor mortis during the hours He hung dead on the cross, suspended only by nails in his wrists and feet.
>Firstly, as you have noted Stephen, if Jesus's head was bowed down slightly, this would contribute to the appearance of the chest being higher than normal.
And it was `frozen' in that position by rigor mortis.
>Secondly, if you view this image which is simulating Jesus being covered in the Shroud:
>
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/03/30/4349690-the-face-in-the-shroud?lite
Thanks for that article which I hadn't seen (or at least hadn't saved).
>You can easily see that the main contact of the shroud over the chest would be over the top half of the chest, with limited if any contact with the bottom half of the chest. This would also explain why the chest seems higher than normal, because we don't see much image of the lower half of the chest.
Agreed. Irrespective of the Pray Ms, it is further evidence of the authenticity of the Shroud, that the image is that of a body which had been `frozen' by rigor mortis into a head bowed forward position, and the Shroud covering that body would have to have a larger gap between the head and the chest, than if the body was lying flat.
But even if a forger realised that a crucified body would be `frozen' in that leaning forward position, why would he bother depicting it because: 1) it would make his artistic task more difficult (especially in the case of a statue/bas relief); 2) it would seem to his 14th century or earlier audience that he had made an elementary anatomical error; and 3) his 14th century or earlier audience would have been satisfied with far less.
>Thirdly, on a lean and reasonably muscular male figure, like Jesus appeared to be, the chest position will rise up higher when the figure is reclined compared to standing stall.
Agreed. And this is also a problem for Gilbert Lavoie's theory that the image was imprinted on the Shroud when Jesus was in a vertical resurrected position (which I don't accept).
Stephen E. Jones
I've never used the Shroud Scope before, excellent resource!
Couple of thoughts:
- Flagrum marks seem most obvious on the chest on the Shroud image: is that what the 4 lines on the chest of Jesus at the top of Plate III represent?
- If you mentally remove the large burn marks from the 1500s,then the image, the blood marks, and the poker holes are the most prominent features of the Shroud in the 12th century. All are represented on the herringbone weave Shroud in the lower image of Plate III: the image shown symbolically by the cross motifs between the angel's feet and the head napkin, blood by the two red streaks near the angel's foot, and the poker holes by the obvious L shaped circle pattern
Matt
>I've never used the Shroud Scope before, excellent resource!
Couple of thoughts:
- Flagrum marks seem most obvious on the chest on the Shroud image:
Disagree. Look again! The Durante 2002 Horizontal image shows the back first. The Shroud Man's back and back of His legs are COVERED with flagrum marks.
>is that what the 4 lines on the chest of Jesus at the top of Plate III represent?
They may well be. It is hard to think what else they could be.
>- If you mentally remove the large burn marks from the 1500s,then the image, the blood marks, and the poker holes are the most prominent features of the Shroud in the 12th century.
Agreed. Counting the flagrum marks as "blood marks." Otherwise they are also prominent.
>All are represented on the herringbone weave Shroud in the lower image of Plate III:
It may be that the red crosses are meant to represent the flagrum marks.
I have just realised that the red cross marks where the `poker holes' are, are diagonal, unlike all the others which are orthogonal. Possibly this is to highlight them?
>the image shown symbolically by the cross motifs between the angel's feet and the head napkin, blood by the two red streaks near the angel's foot, and the poker holes by the obvious L shaped circle pattern
Agreed that the Pray Manuscript artist incorporated all the major features of the Shroud symbolically in Plate III (and on Plate IV).
Those who deny that the Pray Manuscript was based on the Shroud, only show that their `position' really is just invincible ignorance:
"Invincible ignorance fallacy ... The invincible ignorance fallacy is a deductive fallacy of circularity where the person in question simply refuses to believe the argument, ignoring any evidence given. It is not so much a fallacious tactic in argument as it is a refusal to argue in the proper sense of the word, the method instead being to make assertions with no consideration of objections." ("Invincible ignorance fallacy," Wikipedia, 11 May 2012).
That is, their `position' really is that NOTHING would convince them that the Shroud is authentic.
And that includes Lombatti who the post above is about. His claim that the Shroud was forged c.1330, MUST deny that the Pray Manuscript (1192-95) depicts the Shroud.
Stephen E. Jones
>... 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. ...
Since this post has now 45 comments under it, and the previous post had 41, I have decided to delete the above from my policies for this blog.
My policy on comments is now as below.
Stephen E. Jones
-----------------------------------
Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.
> Disagree. Look again! The Durante 2002 Horizontal image shows the back first. The Shroud Man's back and back of His legs are COVERED with flagrum marks.
Sorry, I meant in terms of the FRONTAL image of the Shroud the marks on the chest seem the most obvious, although some of the marks on the legs are quite obvious too. Agreed that if you look at the front and back images the back marks are much more marked.
As you say, it's hard to imagine what else the 4 lines on Jesus's chest in the image at the top of Plate III might otherwise be.
Muscular sinews? Unlikely...
Matt
>Sorry, I meant in terms of the FRONTAL image of the Shroud the marks on the chest seem the most obvious ...
Agreed that there are extensive flagrum marks on the chest. Presumably from each flagrum's end (there were two) coming around from the back.
>As you say, it's hard to imagine what else the 4 lines on Jesus's chest in the image at the top of Plate III might otherwise be.
They may be meant by the artist to symbolically represent all the flagrum marks on Jesus' body.
But since they are not specific enough to be certain, it is best not to include them in definite points of congruence between the PM and the Shroud.
We must remember that the artist was not necessarily an expert in the Shroud. So he may not have even realised what the flagrum marks on Jesus' body image on the Shroud were.
Or indeed what the `poker holes' were.
It is a miracle of Divine providence that:
1) The PM was painted at all.
2) The PM was painted in at least 1192-95, thereby proving wrong: a) the AD 1260-1390 C14 date; b) Bishop d'Arcis c.1355 "cunningly painted" claim; c) Lombatti's c.1330 Turkish forgery, etc.
3) The PM's artist was so faithful to the original that, amazingly for that era, he even depicted Jesus nude.
4) The PM has at least 12 unique points of congruence with the Shroud, thereby proving beyond reasonable doubt that it was copied from the Shroud.
5) Which in turn is a huge support for Wilson's theory that the Shroud is the Edessa image, which was taken from Edessa to Constantinople in 944 and disappeared from there in the 1204 sack of Constantinople.
6) The PM has survived down to this day (the Boldva Monastery, in which the PM was compiled and presumably held, was destroyed and burned in 1285 by the Mongols):
"Boldva Boldva is a village in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county, Hungary. ... Between 1175 and 1180 the Ordo Saint Benedict built a monastery at Boldva ... A famous codex, the so called Pray codex, The Sacramentarium Bolvense contains one of the oldest Hungarian text: The Speech at the Funeral. During the second Mongolian invasion at 1285 the building was destroyed and burned. The monks escaped to the Somogyvár monastery." ("Boldva," Wikipedia, 29 April 2011).
7) The PM is in Old Hungarian and was only rediscovered in Hungary in 1770, so the likelihood that a hypothetical Shroud forger in 12-14th century France would know the PM existed, let alone travel the ~2,500 km (~1550 mi) round trip to copy it, is effectively zero.
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen, Please can you elaborate on your point No.12. I don't see how this gives any proof to Wilson's theory about the Edessa Image. The documentation shows quite clearly that the Mandylion/Image of Edessa is a separate piece of cloth from the shroud in the Blachernae Chapel described by Robert de Clari. The PM could be a copy of the Blachernae Shroud , full stop.
Why does the argument have to include the Image of Edessa at all?
Phil
>Stephen, Please can you elaborate on your point No.12. I don't see how this gives any proof to Wilson's theory about the Edessa Image.
Can you please clarify what you mean by my "point No.12"? My post above does not have a point No.12 nor does it mention the Edessa Image.
Do you mean my comment: "5) Which in turn is a huge support for Wilson's theory that the Shroud is the Edessa image, which was taken from Edessa to Constantinople in 944 and disappeared from there in the 1204 sack of Constantinople"?
>The documentation shows quite clearly that the Mandylion/Image of Edessa is a separate piece of cloth from the shroud in the Blachernae Chapel described by Robert de Clari.
Can you also please clarify what you mean by "the documentation"?
>The PM could be a copy of the Blachernae Shroud , full stop.
If by "the Blachernae Shroud" you mean the Shroud of Turin, agreed.
>Why does the argument have to include the Image of Edessa at all?
As I said, the Pray Manuscript being a copy of the Shroud of Turin in Constantinople, pre-1192-95, supports Ian Wilson's theory that the the Shroud is the Edessa image, doubled in four.
Stephen E. Jones
> But since they are not specific enough to be certain, it is best not to include them in definite points of congruence between the PM and the Shroud.
Agreed, but it's still significant.
Especially because, as far as I can recall, showing flagrum marks on the body of Christ was rare if not non-existent until at least the 15th or 16th centuries.
If, as is highly likely, the 4 lines on the chest represent flagrum marks, then this provides further support that the PM artist saw the Shroud.
on the issue of flagrum marks, how about this...
It is not till the 15th and 16th centuries that we start to see Jesus's body shown in art with full and comprehensive body wounds, including flagrum marks. This is important, as the carbon dating puts the age of the Shroud well before the time in history when flagrum marks came to be depicted on Jesus's body in art. Therefore, in terms of art history, it would have made more sense if the carbon dating arrived at a 15th / 16th century date, rather than 13th / 14th.
The fact that in the 13th and 14th centuries Jesus's body was usually shown with minimal or no body wounds, makes it seem unlikely that the shroud would have been a mad-made fake dating from this time - if it was dating from this time then it would likely be absent of the numerous flagrum marks.
All of this is consistent with religous history, which from the 15th and 16th centuries saw Jesus's humanity and suffering emphasised more, as opposed to his divinity in older times.
Thoughts?
"mad-made" should of course be "man made" - apologies!!!!
Stephen. Yes, apologies about point 12. When you move up to to the Comments box you are no longer alongside the original posting and I just remembered your '12 points'. I should have rechecked but you are right about my question.
The documentation is as follows:
1201. Nicholas Mesorites, in charge of the relics in the Pharos collection, the chapel inside the imperial palace. lists the Mandylion as being there, plus a 'cheap' set of funerary cloths.
1203. Robert of Clari, visiting the Balchernae Chapel, lists a shroud with an image which is the closest we have in description to the Turin Shroud ( and you and others accept that they are one and the same).
So two different documents, two different relics.
There have been attempts made to suggest that the Mandylion moved to the Blachernae Chapel between 1201 and 1203 but moving relics was big business as the records of the arrival of the Image of Edessa/Mandylion in Constantinople in 944 showed. First,there had to be a special reason ( the conquest of Edessa in the Image case) for a relic to abandon its home church, none known for the removal of the Mandylion,, secondly the translatio, as the ceremony was known, would surely have been recorded- most were because they were big public events, thirdly the Blachernae Chapel on the outskirts of the city was very vulnerable as was seen in 1204 when its relics were looted and the Pharos Chapel remained intact. You would not move your prize relic out there!
So the evidence is as a secure as one can make it that the the Mandylion/Image of Edessa and the Blachernae Shroud are not the same.
De Clari's account is the only mention we have of the Blachernae Shroud so his account in itself makes no link to the Mandylion.
I have read somewhere that the Blachernae relic collection was very ancient and many of the relics came in direct from Jerusalem when it was still part of the Byzantine empire. So one might assume that the Blachernae Shroud, whether the Turin Shroud or not, came to Constantinople directly from Jerusalem , very early on. This would give it a simpler history even if the documentation may not have survived.
So your argument that the Pray Codex may have been inspired by the Blachernae Shroud can stand without the Image of Edessa being involved at all. So this is why I queried your point ( yes, no. 5, I have checked this time!) that Wilson's case for the Blachernae Shroud and the Image of Edessa being one and the same is given support if the Pray Codex shows the Blachernae Shroud. There is nothing in the Pray Codex to suggest any link to the Image of Edessa.
I hope this makes my point clear, thanks Phil.
Stephen
I had some lingering doubts about whether the Shroud pre-dated 1260 (the earliest date in the carbon dating).
Those doubts have now been vanquished.
Refer the images of Christ at this website, which predate the 1200s:
http://www.restoredtraditions.com/christ_portrait_icon_pantocrator_ii-1.aspx
Note in a couple of the images the highly distinctive marking around the base of the neck. This strongly correlates with a marking on the shroud around the base of the neck, below the forked beard! Note too flagrum mark cuts on the neck in these images, consistent with the image on the Shroud.
I am now fully convinced by the collective evidence that the Shroud COMFORTABLY predates 1260
Matt
>>But since they are not specific enough to be certain, it is best not to include them in definite points of congruence between the PM and the Shroud.
>Agreed, but it's still significant.
Agreed.
>Especially because, as far as I can recall, showing flagrum marks on the body of Christ was rare if not non-existent until at least the 15th or 16th centuries.
If this is so (and I don't know that it is or isn't), irrespective of the PM, it is further evidence that the Shroud was not forged before the 15th century. That is the Shroud is authentic. I wonder why I had not heard this before (or maybe I had and had forgotten it).
>If, as is highly likely, the 4 lines on the chest represent flagrum marks, then this provides further support that the PM artist saw the Shroud.
Absent any positive evidence that the four marks on Jesus' chest on the PM do represent flagrum marks (e.g. something about their shape, position, length, etc), it is a type of Argument from Ignorance fallacy (i.e. they must be flagrum marks because what else could they be?) to claim they are.
We are starting to go around in circles on this one. Perhaps we should agree to agree!
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen, Thanks for printing my post in full. I will just summarise one point.
If you were speculating how the burial shroud of Jesus might have got from Jerusalem to Constantinople, the most likely route would have been direct to Constantinople along with other relics that we know the emperors brought from Jerusalem when they ruled the city before the Arab Conquests. Whether there is any documentary evidence for a shroud being among the relics or not, it is a much more straightforward theory than anything put forward by Wilson. You don't have to come via Edessa. And there is a lot to be said for simplicity.
Matt
>It is not till the 15th and 16th centuries that we start to see Jesus's body shown in art with full and comprehensive body wounds, including flagrum marks.
See my response to your previous comment. I would like to see references to this claim of yours.
>This is important, as the carbon dating puts the age of the Shroud well before the time in history when flagrum marks came to be depicted on Jesus's body in art. Therefore, in terms of art history, it would have made more sense if the carbon dating arrived at a 15th / 16th century date, rather than 13th / 14th.
Again see my previous response. In it I realised that if what you said was true, it is further evidence that the Shroud was not forged before the 15th century, i.e. it is authentic. But in that case I am surprised I had not heard it before (or maybe I had but had forgotten it).
>The fact that in the 13th and 14th centuries Jesus's body was usually shown with minimal or no body wounds, makes it seem unlikely that the shroud would have been a man-made fake dating from this time - if it was dating from this time then it would likely be absent of the numerous flagrum marks.
Typo "mad-made" above corrected to "man-made."
The brutal realism of the Shroud: Jesus naked front and back, His body showing marks of such unspeakable tortures that the French World War I army surgeon, Pierre Barbet (1884-1961), had reached a point where he no longer could even think of them:
"Besides, when a surgeon has meditated on the sufferings of the Passion, when he has worked out its timing and its physiological circumstances, when he has methodically set himself to reconstruct all the stages of that martyrdom of a night and a day, he can ... as it were share in the sufferings of Christ. I can assure you of a dreadful thing, I have reached a point when I no longer dare to think of them. No doubt this is cowardice, but I hold that one must either have heroic virtue or else fail to understand; that one must either be a saint or else irresponsible, in order to do the Way of the Cross. I no longer can." (Barbet, P., "A Doctor at Calvary,"1953, p.187. Emphasis original).
is far beyond what medieval or earlier artists have depicted.
>All of this is consistent with religous history, which from the 15th and 16th centuries saw Jesus's humanity and suffering emphasised more, as opposed to his divinity in older times.
Thoughts?
Agreed. See above. The Christ Pantocrator Byzantine depictions of the Shroud, used the Shroud to portray Jesus as living and ruling, and they `airbrushed' out the Shroud's bloodstains and wounds.
That may be part of many modern-day Christians' opposition to the Shroud-it depicts the brutal reality of Jesus' suffering which they don't want to think about.
Stephen E. Jones
>It is not till the 15th and 16th centuries that we start to see Jesus's body shown in art with full and comprehensive body wounds, including flagrum marks.
>See my response to your previous comment. I would like to see references to this claim of yours.
This is a working theory. Examples from the late 1400's of art that shows body-wide cuts, marks and blood can be found at these websites:
http://www.bridgemanart.com/asset/229986/German-School-15th-century/Ms-351455-fol.148v-The-Entombment-from-%27The-Life?lang=en-US
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Gr%C3%BCnewald
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andachtsbilder
All are German art, so there must have been a movement in Germany around the late 1400s to early 1500s to show Jesus's body in a much more tortured and injured manner.
From Wikipedia:
"In the Late Middle Ages, increasingly intense and realistic representations of suffering were shown,[22] reflecting the development of highly emotional andachtsbilder subjects and devotional trends such as German mysticism; some, like the Throne of Mercy, Man of Sorrows and Pietà, related to the Crucifixion"
(From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_in_the_arts#Through_history)
From a comprehensive search through google images, I have not been able to find any examples of art before the mid 1400s that ever shows Jesus with anything more than 2-3 discrete blood markings, typically the hands and feet, and on the torso, perhaps a little around the crown of thorns.
Given this, it seems illogical that a genius of an artist might have created the Shroud within the time period of the carbon dating, given that it was not the practice in art at the time to show the widespread injuries and marks on the body, as we see in some of the German art from the mid 1450s onwards. That's why I say in art history terms it would make more sense that the Shroud was created from the mid 1400s onwards. But of course we know that is not the case, because of other evidence.
Phil
>Stephen. Yes, apologies about point 12. When you move up to to the Comments box you are no longer alongside the original posting and I just remembered your '12 points'. I should have rechecked but you are right about my question.
OK.
>The documentation is as follows:
1201. Nicholas Mesorites, in charge of the relics in the Pharos collection, the chapel inside the imperial palace. lists the Mandylion as being there, plus a 'cheap' set of funerary cloths.
Agreed, but as Wilson points out, Nicholas Mesarites also lists what can only be the full-length Shroud:
"There is certainly a hint of this in how, in the earliest years of the thirteenth century, we find Nicholas Mesarites, custodian of the Pharos Chapel relic collection, referring to what is undoubtedly Jesus's burial shroud (whether imprinted or not imprinted). First, he described this as proof of Jesus's resurrection: 'In this chapel Christ rises again, and the sindon with the burial linens is the clear proof.' Then, in his second reference to this same shroud, he remarked intriguingly, 'The burial sindon of Christ: this is of linen, of cheap and easily obtainable material, still smelling fragrant of myrrh, defying decay, because it wrapped the mysterious, naked dead body after the Passion.' Which immediately raises the question, what was it about this shroud that caused. Mesarites to claim it as proof of Jesus's resurrection, also to be so confident that Jesus's dead body had been laid in it naked? Was he actually talking about the Christ-imprinted cloth of Edessa, all along supposed to have borne Christ's face only, but now gradually assuming its true identity as Jesus's burial shroud?" (Wilson, I., "The Shroud," 2010, p.185).
Wilson also points out in page 184 that the Constantinople authorities would be unlikely to admit that the Mandylion, with its centuries old tradition, had simply `disappeared'. So they listed both the full-length Shroud and the face-only Mandylion.
Also, they may well have had a copy of the Mandylion, as Rome's Veronica is, with which they could replace the original Mandylion which had become the Shroud.
Or they may simply have listed the one Shroud as two different items: the full-length Shroud and the Shroud doubled-in-four as the Edessa Cloth/Mandylion.
Wilson has experimentally demonstrated that when the Shroud is doubled-in-four, i.e. folded 8 times, it produces the Edessa Cloth portrait in its unusual `landscape' aspect:
[continued]
[continued]
"For me a crucial breakthrough in overcoming this objection surfaced in the 1960s, when I noticed how a sixth-century Greek version of the Abgar story, the Acts of the Holy Apostle Thaddaeus', describes the Edessa cloth as a tetradiplon. In all the corpus of Greek literature tetradiplon is an extremely rare word, and totally exclusive to the Edessa cloth. Yet, because it is a combination of two common words, tetra meaning `four' and diplon meaning `two fold' or `doubled', its meaning is actually very clear: `doubled in four', suggesting four times two folds. This immediately raised the thought: `What happens if you try giving the Shroud four times two folds?' When I tried this, using a full-length photograph of the Shroud, I was dumb-founded by the result - as I continue to be today. There was the Shroud face, front-facing and disembodied-looking on a landscape aspect cloth, exactly as on the earliest artists' copies of the cloth of Edessa. Whenever the Shroud is presented in this manner - and it is a very logical way to present and make manageable a 437 cm length of cloth - its nature as a `shroud' is in fact subordinated to its rather more socially acceptable nature as a `portrait'. And historically such an arrangement finds ready support in the description of the Edessa cloth, on its arrival in Constantinople, as `fastened to a board and covered with the gold which is now to be seen'. It therefore readily explains the many centuries of silence about an image-bearing `shroud' as such." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," 2000, pp.110-111).
Moreover, STURP's raking light photography confirmed that the Shroud has a set of very old fold-marks consistent with it having been doubled in four:
"Clearly a crucial component of this theory is that the Shroud should bear signs of its once having been folded, for some significant length of time, in the 'doubled in four' manner postulated. When the STURP team worked on it in 1978, at my urging they specifically included in their test programme raking light photography to show up as clearly as possible the innumerable ancient and not-so-ancient creases that criss-cross its surface. When Dr John Jackson carefully analysed these creases to gauge whether there were any significant and long-established fold-marks consistent with the 'doubled-in-four' theory, he found that indeed they were there. He even found that the way they fell, with two particularly pronounced concentrations - one at the level of the topmost part of the back of the head, the other just below the crossed hands - indicated that the cloth had at one time been stored so that, if it was pulled upwards, the imprint of the man of the Shroud would appear to rise up from whatever casket in which it was stored." (Wilson. & Schwortz, 2000, p.112).
See illustrations of this in Dan Porter's "The Definitive Shroud of Turin FAQ."
This empirical, scientific evidence that the Shroud is the Edessa Cloth/Mandylion, doubled-in-four, trumps your ambiguous "documentation."
[continued]
[continued]
>1203. Robert of Clari, visiting the Balchernae Chapel, lists a shroud with an image which is the closest we have in description to the Turin Shroud ( and you and others accept that they are one and the same).
Agreed.
>So two different documents, two different relics.
No. Just a listing of "two different relics" which may be: 1) the Shroud and a copy of the Mandylion; or 2) the full-length Shroud and the Shroud doubled-in-four as the Mandylion.
>There have been attempts made to suggest that the Mandylion moved to the Blachernae Chapel between 1201 and 1203 but moving relics was big business as the records of the arrival of the Image of Edessa/Mandylion in Constantinople in 944 showed.
The arrival of the Shroud in Constantinople from Edessa for the first time, and the moving of the Shroud within Constantinople are hardly comparable.
>First,there had to be a special reason ( the conquest of Edessa in the Image case) for a relic to abandon its home church,
Moving the Shroud temporarily within Constantinople from the Pharos Chapel to the Blachernae Church is hardly to "abandon" its normal location in the Pharos Chapel!
You are struggling to make a weak case seem stronger by exaggeration.
>none known for the removal of the Mandylion,
Well, for starters, if the Mandylion is the Shroud doubled-in-four, then it was removed from Jerusalem to Edessa and then from Edessa to Constantinople, not counting other locations in between.
>secondly the translatio, as the ceremony was known, would surely have been recorded- most were because they were big public events,
This is an example of the Argument from Silence fallacy: "we today, ~800 years later, have no record that the full-length Shroud was temporarily moved within Constantinople from the Pharos Chapel to the Blachernae Church, therefore it didn't happen!"
>thirdly the Blachernae Chapel on the outskirts of the city was very vulnerable as was seen in 1204 when its relics were looted and the Pharos Chapel remained intact. You would not move your prize relic out there!
You would if it was your only `weapon' to save the city from being looted by the Crusaders: showing the full-length Shroud as a palladium:
"Palladium (mythology), a statue which protected Troy and later Rome By analogy, a `palladium' is anything believed to provide protection or safety; a safeguard" ("Palladium (disambiguation)," Wikipedia, 26 December 2011).
Indeed, in 1453 during the siege of Constantinople, its then most holy relic, "The Virgin Hodegetria" was "paraded along the city walls" as a palladium:
"In Greek and Roman mythology, a palladium or palladion was an image of great antiquity on which the safety of a city was said to depend. ... Palladium-equivalents in other cultures ... The Virgin Hodegetria - an ancient Madonna and Child image - was the traditional protectress of Byzantine Constantinople. At times of siege it was paraded along the city walls. At the final fall of the city (1453) it failed to deter the Turks, was pillaged, and disappeared forever." ("Palladium (mythology)," Wikipedia, 5 June 2012).
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In fact the Edessa Cloth had been used at least once as a palladium by Edessa in 544:
"In this year [544] the Syrian-born historian Evagrius (527-600) described the [Edessa] cloth's having been used as a protective talisman or palladium to ward off a determined attack on Edessa by the Persian king Chosroes Nirhirvan. In this incident Chosroes, in an all-out attack, ordered a huge mound of timber built, which was gradually pushed forward in order to enable his men to scale Edessa's high walls. As a counterattack the Edessans decided to tunnel under their walls in an attempt to set fire to the mound from below before it could be maneuvered into position. At this point the Mandylion was deployed. In Evagrius' words: `The mine was completed; but they [the Edessans] failed in attempting to fire the wood, because the fire, having no exit whence it could obtain a supply of air, was unable to take hold of it. In this state of utter perplexity they brought out the divinely made image not made by the hands of man, which Christ our God sent to King Abgar when he desired to see him. Accordingly, having introduced this sacred likeness into the mine and washed it over with water, they sprinkled some upon the timber... . the timber immediately caught the flame, and being in an instant reduced to cinders, communicated with that above, and the fire spread in all directions.'" (Wilson, I., "The Shroud of Turin," 1979, pp.136-137. Emphasis original),
>So the evidence is as a secure as one can make it that the the Mandylion/Image of Edessa and the Blachernae Shroud are not the same.
Exaggeration! The only `evidence' you have is the Shroud and Mandylion being on the same list of relics, but that is easily explained as Constantinople not wanting to `lose' the Mandylion, so either it listed a copy of the Mandylion, as well as the full-length Shroud, or it listed the same item twice: the full length Shroud and the face-only Shroud, i.e. the Edessa Cloth/Mandylion.
>De Clari's account is the only mention we have of the Blachernae Shroud so his account in itself makes no link to the Mandylion.
Which raises a problem: what became of the Mandylion? We have the full-length Shroud, but no face-only Mandylion and no record that it was ever destroyed.
But if the Shroud is the Mandylion, doubled-in-four, then the Mandylion never was destroyed-it still exists-as the Shroud of Turin!
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>I have read somewhere that the Blachernae relic collection was very ancient and many of the relics came in direct from Jerusalem when it was still part of the Byzantine empire.
Wilson lists them: "the crown of thorns, the mantle, the scourge, the cane, the sponge, the wood of the Lord's cross, the nails, the lance, blood, the robe, the girdle, shoes, the linen cloth and sudarium of the entombment" (Wilson, I., "The Shroud," 2010, p.184). But there is no reason to think any of these `relics' are genuine, even if they did come from Jerusalem.
>So one might assume that the Blachernae Shroud, whether the Turin Shroud or not, came to Constantinople directly from Jerusalem , very early on. This would give it a simpler history even if the documentation may not have survived.
This is clearly fallacious. Just because some items in 11th century Constantinople's relic-collection may or may not have come direct from Jerusalem, does not mean that the Shroud did. You are making the same error as Lombatti above, lumping Shroud of Turin with its unique, double-sided, photographic negative, 3-D image in with a collection of relics that even the Byzantines, by their actions, did not regard as in the same league as the Shroud.
>So your argument that the Pray Codex may have been inspired by the Blachernae Shroud can stand without the Image of Edessa being involved at all.
By "Blachernae Shroud" I mean the Shroud of Turin (as it later came to be called) and by "the Image of Edessa"/Edessa Cloth/Mandylion I mean the Shroud of Turin doubled-in-four.
>So this is why I queried your point ( yes, no. 5, I have checked this time!) that Wilson's case for the Blachernae Shroud and the Image of Edessa being one and the same is given support if the Pray Codex shows the Blachernae Shroud.
The support the Pray Manuscript gives to Wilson's theory that the Shroud and Image of Edessa are one and the same is that the at least 12 unique shared features of the Pray Manuscript prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Shroud was in Constantinople at the same time as the Mandylion was.
>There is nothing in the Pray Codex to suggest any link to the Image of Edessa.
See above.
>I hope this makes my point clear, thanks Phil.
Thanks for your comment. I hope I have made my opposite point clear too!
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen. Thanks for your detailed comments. I prefer simple explanations - the idea that the Blachernae Shroud (which you accept as the Turin Shroud) came with other relics, possibly in the fifth century when the Blachernae reiic collection was first built up, avoids all the speculations about copies of the Mandylion,etc, Wilson, has to make for his case to work. It gets the history of the Shroud back much earlier, gets a direct rather indirect link to Jerusalem and presumably the Shroud would had been more likely to have been preserved inside the Blachernae Chapel, looked after by the clergy, than for centuries in a wall in Edessa where it is unlikely to have survived in the condition we know it to be in now. (The BIG issue according to a friend of mine who is a textile expert- all textile experts are apparently obsessed with conservation because it is so easy to lose even modern textiles to damp,etc.)
Just circumstantial evidence, of course, but it avoids a lot of complication 'ifs', 'possibles' and 'maybes' that Wilson's work depends on.
Wilson's argument is now subject to intense criticism - see discussions on Dan's blog, especially Davor's full analysis of the Wilson case. I am waiting to see how Wilson responds to this before commenting further. So I am happy to leave the argument running until we hear more. Thanks for the debate.Phil.
Stephen. There is apparently an alternative solution for tetrapylon referring it to the method with which the Image of Edessa was folded for storage. The reference, according to Dan's blog, given is to Charles Freeman's article 'The Shroud of Turin and the Image of Edessa - A Misguided Journey.' This theory claims to undermine Wilson- I will leave it to you to follow up and judge but as it seems to be such a big part of Wilson's argument. and it clearly means a lot to you too, it seemed worth mentioning.
P.S. The relics listed by Wilson are not the same ones mentioned in a variety of fifth century documents relating to Pulcheria, the sister of the emperor Theodosius II and Eudocia the empress, both of whom brought relics back directly from Jerusalem, apparently of Stephen ( that should brighten your day) and a robe of the Virgin Mary.
Stephen
I'd be interested in your view on my comment at 3.52 pm on June 25, regarding the unusual marking around the base of the neck that is apparent on a number of Byzantine depictions of Jesus, and seem to correspond with a marking around the base of the neck on the Shroud.
Has this ever been mentioned in the Shroud world? The marking is very distinctive
Matt
>I had some lingering doubts about whether the Shroud pre-dated 1260 (the earliest date in the carbon dating).
Everyone has their threshold of belief in the authenticity of the Shroud. I passed mine back in 2005. I have no doubt that the Shroud is the very burial sheet of Jesus, bearing the image of His crucified, dead and resurrected body!
>Those doubts have now been vanquished.
>
>Refer the images of Christ at this website, which predate the 1200s:
>
http://www.restoredtraditions.com/christ_portrait_icon_pantocrator_ii-1.aspx
Thanks for the link.
>Note in a couple of the images the highly distinctive marking around the base of the neck.
This is Vignon marking #13: "Transverse transverse line across throat."
>This strongly correlates with a marking on the shroud around the base of the neck, below the forked beard!
Indeed it does. As do the other 14 Vignon markings.
>Note too flagrum mark cuts on the neck in these images, consistent with the image on the Shroud.
I couldn't see those "flagrum mark cuts on the neck in these images." Can you clarify which image they are clearest on and describe what they look like and where they are?
>I am now fully convinced by the collective evidence that the Shroud COMFORTABLY predates 1260
Great!
The problem for Shroud anti-authenticists is that, since the Shroud does comfortable predate 1260 (as proved beyond reasonable doubt by the at least 12 unique congruities between the Pray Manuscript (1192-95) and the Shroud), then:
1. The C14 dating is wrong (and almost certainly fraudulent).
2. Bishop d'Arcis' memo that the Shroud was painted in c.1355 is wrong.
3. McCrone's claim the Shroud was painted in 1355 is wrong.
4. Lombatti's claim that the Shroud was forged in c.1330 is wrong.
5. The further back in time from 1192-95, the Shroud's origin is pushed by the evidence (e.g. the sixth century Vignon markings), the weaker the artistic ability to forge it was. It already was too weak in the 14th century (and indeed the 21st century!) to forge the Shroud.
6. Once anti-authenticists favoured date of c.1355 (or 1325 +/- 65 years) for the origin of the Shroud fell, anti-authenticist theories are in free-fall, and there is no good stopping point for them all the way back to AD 30-33!
Stephen E. Jones
Thanks Stephen, I had heard of the Vignon markings but never explored them. I must say I am not convinced by ALL the Vignon marking comparisons, but there are several that are very compelling. I think no. 13 at the base of the neck which I highlighted is one of the very compelling ones. There can be no "coincidences" with that - there is a very clear and distinct horizontal line at the base of the neck on the Shroud, and on many of the Byzantine images of Christ.
Phil
>Stephen, Thanks for printing my post in full.
I usually do, unless I need to shoehorn my reply comment into Blogger's 4096 character limit.
>I will just summarise one point. If you were speculating how the burial shroud of Jesus might have got from Jerusalem to Constantinople,
I am not given to "speculating." I prefer facts to speculation.
>the most likely route would have been direct to Constantinople along with other relics that we know the emperors brought from Jerusalem when they ruled the city before the Arab Conquests.
A `minor' problem with your "most likely route" is that "Constantinople" did not exist until "It was founded in AD 330":
"Constantinople ... in the Byzantine era ... was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin and the Ottoman Empires. It was founded in AD 330, at ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Constantine I, after whom it was named." ("Constantinople," Wikipedia, 25 June 2012).
>Whether there is any documentary evidence for a shroud being among the relics or not,
There isn't.
>it is a much more straightforward theory than anything put forward by Wilson.
So was the theory that there were only four elements "a much more straightforward theory" than Mendelev's theory (now fact) that there were 92 natural elements!
But, like that "more straightforward" theory, yours is a simplistic theory, which takes no account of the fact that if the Shroud really is the burial sheet of Jesus, the early disciples in whose possession it would have been, would have taken it with them (not sent it off halfway around the then known world to a city that did not then exist).
And as the Book of Acts documents, after most of the Christians were driven out of Jerusalem in the persecution that followed the first Christians' preaching that Jesus had been resurrected, the greatest Christian city was Syrian Antioch:
Acts 11:25-26. "So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul [St. Paul], and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians."
Therefore it was much more likely that the Shroud was in Antioch before it went to Edessa and then to Constantinople.
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>You don't have to come via Edessa.
Edessa was a very important city in the first ~500 years of the Christian Era. And unlike Contantinople it actually existed in Apostolic times.
Indeed in the church history of Eusebius of Caesarea (c.263-339), of which I own a copy, Eusebius quotes a message sent by Jesus to Eddessa's then King Abgar V:
"The 4th century church historian Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, records a tradition [Historia Ecclesiastica, I, xiii, ca AD 325] concerning a correspondence on this occasion, exchanged between Abgar of Edessa and Jesus. Eusebius was convinced that the original letters, written in Syriac (Aramaic), were kept in the archives of Edessa. Eusebius also states that in due course, after Christ's ascension, Thaddeus, namely Addai (called Addaï), or one of the seventy-two Disciples, called Thaddeus of Edessa, was sent by Thomas the Apostle in AD 29. Eusebius copies the two letters into the text of his history." ("Abgar V," Wikipedia, 13 June 2012).
>And there is a lot to be said for simplicity.
Not when it's simplistic:
"simplistic ... 1. characterized by extreme simplicity; naive; 2. oversimplifying complex problems; making unrealistically simple judgments or analyses" ("simplistic," The Free Dictionary, 15 June 2012).
Besides, your "Jerusalem ... direct to Constantinople" theory is not even simple. It has to explain where the Shroud was in the at least 300 years between AD 30 when Jesus was crucified (and resurrected) and AD 330 when Constantinople was founded.
But of course if you don't accept the evidence that the Shroud of Turin is Jesus' burial sheet, then you can simply claim it was just another fake relic that was sent along with other fake relics from Jerusalem (or wherever) to Constantinople, at any time between the city's founding in 330 to its sacking in 1204, when the Shroud disappeared.
Stephen E. Jones
Matt
>I'd be interested in your view on my comment at 3.52 pm on June 25, regarding the unusual marking around the base of the neck that is apparent on a number of Byzantine depictions of Jesus, and seem to correspond with a marking around the base of the neck on the Shroud.
See my reply which `crossed in the mail'.
I can understand that comments want me to respond quickly to their comments, but I am responding usually in date and time order.
My `day job' is a casual relief (aka. substitute, supply) high school teacher. If I don't get called in by a school, I can usually answer comments quickly.
But here in Australia we are entering our Winter with a consequent upsurge of teachers calling in sick with colds and influenza, and an upsurge in relief teachers (including me) being called in to substitute for them.
So there might sometimes be a lag of a few days before I can answer a comment.
I am answering your comment out of order, to explain this so that I hopefully don't get any more comments following up on why I haven't answered a comment.
>Has this ever been mentioned in the Shroud world? The marking is very distinctive
Yes, as I said in my reply, "This is Vignon marking #13: `Transverse transverse line across throat.'"
But well-spotted in independently discovering a Vignon marking!
Stephen E. Jones
Matt
>>See my response to your previous comment. I would like to see references to this claim of yours.
>This is a working theory. Examples from the late 1400's of art that shows body-wide cuts, marks and blood can be found at these websites:
http://www.bridgemanart.com/asset/229986/German-School-15th-century/Ms-351455-fol.148v-The-Entombment-from-%27The-Life?lang=en-US
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Gr%C3%BCnewald
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andachtsbilder
Thanks for these links.
>All are German art, so there must have been a movement in Germany around the late 1400s to early 1500s to show Jesus's body in a much more tortured and injured manner.
There is a possible connection of the Shroud with Germany, between its disappearance from Constantinople in 1204 and its reappearance at Lirey, France in c.1355. A few days ago I scanned the following, for it eventually to be webbed on the BSTS site on Shroud.com:
"This scenario does not, of course, explain the evidence I found associating the Shroud with the families of Hohenlohe, Henneberg, Andechs and Weinsberg in Hungary and Germany. Could it be that that Shroud was the one which eventually found its way to Besançon? After all, Otto, Duke of Andechs-Meran became Count Palatinate of Burgundy, whose capital is Besançon, in 1231, and his daughter Adelheid, married as her first husband Hugh, Count of Châlon-Salins, first cousin of Jean de Joinville, father-in-law of Jean de Charny. He and the Chapter of Besançon would be reluctant to admit that their Shroud was a copy and not the genuine article, which goes some way to explain why there should have been accusations of fraud against Geoffrey de Charny when he exhibited his Shroud at Lirey." (Currer-Briggs, N., "The Shroud in Greece," 1993, p.14).
>From Wikipedia:
>
>"In the Late Middle Ages, increasingly intense and realistic representations of suffering were shown,[22] reflecting the development of highly emotional andachtsbilder subjects and devotional trends such as German mysticism; some, like the Throne of Mercy, Man of Sorrows and Pietà, related to the Crucifixion"
>
>(From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_in_the_arts#Through_history)
This may reflect a pre-1350 knowledge of the Shroud, possibly deriving directly from Constantinople in the same mid to late 12th century era as the Pray Manuscript or even a post-1204 time of the Shroud being in Germany. Or in German-controlled Greece post-1204.
>From a comprehensive search through google images, I have not been able to find any examples of art before the mid 1400s that ever shows Jesus with anything more than 2-3 discrete blood markings, typically the hands and feet, and on the torso, perhaps a little around the crown of thorns.
It would be very significant if you were to discover your own examples of Vignon markings in German art!
>Given this, it seems illogical that a genius of an artist might have created the Shroud within the time period of the carbon dating, given that it was not the practice in art at the time to show the widespread injuries and marks on the body, as we see in some of the German art from the mid 1450s onwards.
Good point.
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>That's why I say in art history terms it would make more sense that the Shroud was created from the mid 1400s onwards. But of course we know that is not the case, because of other evidence.
You might want to read the essay, "The Shroud of Turin???" by then Ph.D candidate, now English Professor, Danusha V. Goska. She pointed out years before de Wesselow (see her original letter on Shroud.com), that the Shroud cannot be medieval because it does not fit the pattern of medieval art:
"Folklore, like its fellow social sciences, has demonstrated that human expressive culture follows rules, just as surely as carbon decay follows rules. ... Suppose an archaeologist were to discover, in an Egyptian tomb, a work of art that followed the aesthetic prescriptions of Andy Warhol's 20th century American portrait of Marilyn Monroe. ... Of course the ancient Egyptians could produce Warhol-like art. The fact is, though, that they simply never did. Ancient Egyptians, like all artists everywhere, followed the artistic mandates of their time and place. True, art does change, but it changes organically, slowly, and after leaving vast bodies of evidence of change in intermediary forms. ... The Shroud is as much an object of wonder and worthy investigation, in spite of carbon dating, as would be an isolated pharaonic Warhol, or a rock song that had been composed during the period of Gregorian Chant, or a Hopi vase that somehow came to made during the high point of peasant embroidery in Czechoslovakia. Yes, in each case, technology was available to create these anomalous forms; however, as any layman might well point out, humans did not choose to use available technology in order to create anomalous forms. There are two consistently unaddressed flaws in the arguments of those who contend that the Shroud must be of medieval origin, created by contemporaneously available technology. The first flaw is that even if technology had been available to create an image with all the remarkable features of the Shroud, there is no way to explain why an artist would have done so. This question must be explored not via carbon dating, NASA imaging, or pollen tests, but, rather, by comparison with other relics from the medieval era. I have not seen research by experts in medieval relics that attempts to compare and contrast the Shroud with comparable artifacts from the medieval era. Does the Shroud look like other relics, or does it not? If, as I suspect is true, it does not look like other relics from that era, then it behooves anyone who argues for a medieval date to explain exactly why. Those who argue this position must tell us why the equivalent of a Warhol portrait has been found among Egyptian artwork where the laws of human expressive culture dictate that it plainly does not belong."
Stephen E. Jones
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Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.
Stephen. My thesis rests on the fact that Wilson can show no evidence for a shroud having got to Edessa before the sixth century , only the letter is mentioned before the 540s at the earliest- so an arrival in Constantinople in the fifth century would predate anything Wilson can provide evidence for.The question is whether there is documentation ( which does not mean ,of course, the shroud did not travel) There is,I understand from a historian contact, a great deal of documentation in Greek histories of early Christianity about the relationship between Constantinople and Jerusalem, much never translated so i am impressed that you have read it all and know that no shroud is documented there.
If other named relics are documented as coming direct from Jerusalem to Constantinople in the fifth century ,this may have been because they were preserved in Jerusalem. We know there was a piece of the cross there into the sixth century because it was looted from there by the Persians. The legend that Arcalf saw a shroud in Jerusalem in the 680s shows that there may have been relics around and the Crusaders brought back many more. They could,of course, all have been fakes but so could the Turin Shroud.
Thanks for the Goska link, I guess I was coming from a similar position ie. it makes no sense that the shroud would have been created by an artistic GENIUS during the period of the carbon dating, as the body-wide torturous infliction was simply not depicted in representations of Jesus at the time.
You could alternatively argue that it didn't matter how the art of Jesus of the period was represented, rather the GENIUS was trying to faithfully recreate markings of Jesus consistent with the bibical accounts which included scourging - regardless of whether the art of the time (apparently universally) did not show the body-wide scourging. But if this argument was mounted, I would find it hard to buy, as cultural expectations are highly influential.
It is interesting that the German movement of the mid to late 1400s did show Jesus in all his horrific body-wide infliction - more consistent with the Shroud. As you question Stephen, did these artists happen to view the Shroud and be influenced by it? Or were there other cultural or theological influences that led to this representation?
Stephen
Was talking to a friend today about the Pray Manuscript. I pointed out to him one of your 12 points, the hands without thumbs. He questioned the significance, maybe the thumbs are just hidden he said, or maybe the artist was struggling on a small drawing? Or maybe he was just lazy?
My response was that he didn't find any difficulty drawing thumbs on other characters on Plate III. And I also pointed out to him that with the exception of the left hand of the upper image of Jesus on Plate III, when thumbs are hidden in the image it makes total sense from a perspective point of view. However the perspective of Jesus's left hand would have demanded that the thumb be shown (it makes sense that the thumb on the right hand is not shown from a perspective point of view, regardless of whether or not that thumb was shown on the Shroud.)
Thoughts?
Phil
>Stephen. Thanks for your detailed comments.
You're welcome.
>I prefer simple explanations -
See my previous comment about your "simple explanations" being simplistic.
>the idea that the Blachernae Shroud (which you accept as the Turin Shroud)
Please clarify whether you accept that: 1) "the Turin Shroud" which we have today is "the Blachernae Shroud" which crusader Robert de Clari described seeing in Constantinople in 1203:
"Robert de Clari ... was a knight from Picardy. He participated in the Fourth Crusade ... and left a chronicle of the events in Old French. Robert's account of the crusade is especially valuable because of his status as a lower vassal ... Robert's descriptions often shed light on some of the crusader activities that are otherwise glossed over by the nobler sources. ... Robert may be one of the few documented witnesses to the Shroud of Turin before 1358. He reports (1203) that the cloth was in Constantinople: `[There was another of the churches which they called My Lady Saint Mary of Blachernae,] Where there was the Shroud in which our Lord had been wrapped, which every Friday raised itself upright so one could see the figure of our Lord on it.'" ("Robert de Clari," Wikipedia, 18 April 2012)
and 2) whether you accept that "the Turin Shroud" we have today is the burial sheet of Jesus, bearing the image of His crucified and resurrected body. Thanks.
>came with other relics, possibly in the fifth century when the Blachernae reiic collection was first built up,
Please provide your detailed, non-speculative, evidence of: 1) that the Shroud of Turin came to Constantinople "in the fifth century"; 2) where it came from; and 3) where it was between the first century and "the fifth century."
>avoids all the speculations about copies of the Mandylion, etc, Wilson, has to make for his case to work.
This is false. And since you purport to be an authority on "Wilson" and "his case," please state how many of Wilson's books on the Shroud you personally own and/or have read.
Here is a brief, incomplete, summary (without references to save space), of some of the main lines of evidence for Wilson's `Shroud is the Mandylion/Edessa Cloth doubled-in-four theory':
• The 4th century Doctrine of Addai records that there was a portrait of Jesus in Edessa, which healed Edessa's King Abgar V (AD 13-50).
• A 10th century painting in St Catherine's monastery, Sinai, depicts King Abgar holding the Edessa Cloth as a landscape mode painting of Jesus's head.
• In 594 Bishop Evagrius of Edessa described how an image of Jesus "not made with hands" saved Edessa from an attack by the Persian king Chosroes I.
• The 5th century Acts of Thaddeus recounts that a messenger Ananias was sent from King Abgar V to paint Jesus. Instead Jesus reportedly wiped his face on a cloth "doubled-in-four" [Gk. tetradiplon] and left on it an imprint "not made with hands".
• The Edessa Cloth/Mandylion no longer exists as such. And there is no record of it having been destroyed.
• Copies of the Edessa Cloth/Mandylion show the face of Jesus in landscape mode which is highly unusual (unique?) for a single face depiction.
[continued]
[continued]
• If the Shroud of Turin is doubled-in-four (i.e. folded in two between the front and back head images), and then the doubled cloth is then folded four times so that the front head image (face) is uppermost, it looks exactly like copies of the image of Edessa. Try it yourself: 1) print out a full-length photo of the Shroud; 2) cut out the Shroud from the page; 3) fold the cutout of the Shroud in two between the two head images, with the front head image (face) uppermost; 4) then fold the doubled Shroud cutout into four with the face uppermost; 5) you hold in your hand a copy of the Mandylion - a portrait of Jesus head in landscape mode!
• In 943 Constantinople's co-Emperor Romanus Lecapenus sent an army to Edessa (which was then ruled by Moslems) to get them to hand over the Mandylion. Eventually Edessa's Moslem leaders handed it over, as a framed portrait. The Mandylion arrived in Constantinople on 15 August 944 and that day is still honoured as the Feast Day of the Holy Face in the Greek Orthodox Church calendar.
• In 944 a scribe of Constantinople's co-Emperor, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (r. 912-959), in the Narration of Constantine Concerning the Image of Edessa recorded that, "the image ... is more a moist secretion without colors or art of a painting". This sounds like a description of the Shroud. The same Narration also mentions "blood" on the cloth: "When Christ was about to go voluntarily to death ... sweat dripped from him like drops of blood. Then they say he took this piece of cloth which we see now from one of the disciples and wiped off the drops of sweat on it".
• That same evening the Mandylion arrived in Constantinople, a Symeon Magister, wrote of a private viewing of it arranged for co-Emperor Romanus Lecapenus and his two sons, "The sons of Romanus said that they could see nothing but a faint face. Constantine, however, said that he could make out features such as eyes and ears." The Shroud's image is very faint.
• On the day after the arrival of the Mandylion, 16 August 944, Gregory Referendarius, Archdeacon of Hagia Sophia church in Constantinople, preached a sermon in which he described the image having "been imprinted with the drops of sweat ... which flowed ... like drops of blood" and "the image, since those flows, has been embellished by drops [of blood] from his very side ..." The mention of the "blood ... flows" from the "side" of Jesus suggests that the Constantinople authorities were aware that behind the Mandylion was the full-length Shroud.
There is more evidence than this, but space in this post, and my time, is limited.
[contined]
[continued]
>It gets the history of the Shroud back much earlier, gets a direct rather indirect link to Jerusalem and presumably the Shroud would had been more likely to have been preserved inside the Blachernae Chapel, looked after by the clergy,
The Blachernae Chapel was not even built until after 453 and its complex did not receive the relics "brought from Palestine" (which don't mention the Shroud) until 473:
"Saint Mary of Blachernae ... is an Eastern Orthodox church in Istanbul. ... In 450, Empress Aelia Pulcheria started to build a church near a fountain of holy water ... situated outside the walls of Theodosius II at the foot of the sixth hill of Constantinople. After her death in 453, the shrine was completed by her husband, Emperor Marcian. Emperor Leo I erected near the church two other buildings: ... Hagia Soros ("holy reliquary"), since it hosted the holy mantle and robe of the Virgin brought from Palestine in 473, and the Hagion Lousma ("sacred bath") edifice, which enclosed the fountain. ... The importance assumed by the whole complex encouraged the Emperors to lodge in the surroundings and to build there the nucleus of what would in later centuries become the imperial palace of Blachernae. During the first quarter of the 6th century, Emperors Justin I and Justinian I restored and enlarged the church. ... On August 15, 944, the church received other two important objects: the letter written by King Abgar V of Edessa to Jesus and the Mandylion. Both relics were then moved to the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos." ("Church of St. Mary of Blachernae (Istanbul)," Wikipedia, 12 May 2012).
So you need evidence that the Shroud was in "Jerusalem" for at least 450-473 years until it was taken directly to the Blachernae Chapel complex in Constantinople.
>than for centuries in a wall in Edessa where it is unlikely to have survived in the condition we know it to be in now.
Why? If the Shroud in its framed, backed, doubled-in-four, Mandylion state was sealed up in a wall, protected from the environment, then it would have been more likely to have survived than being open to the environment, as it otherwise would have been.
> (The BIG issue according to a friend of mine who is a textile expert- all textile experts are apparently obsessed with conservation because it is so easy to lose even modern textiles to damp,etc.)
Well, your unnamed "textile expert" is wrong. There are many linen cloths that have survived down to the present day, which are older than the Shroud and have been stored in worse conditions.
>Just circumstantial evidence, of course,
Not even "circumstantial evidence." Just a lot of mere assertions.
>but it avoids a lot of complication 'ifs', 'possibles' and 'maybes' that Wilson's work depends on.
See previous. "Wilson's work depends on" historical facts not on "'ifs', 'possibles' and 'maybes'" which is a good description on your `theory'.
[continued]
[continued]
>Wilson's argument is now subject to intense criticism - see discussions on Dan's blog,
Sorry, but I only read Dan's posts, not comments under those posts. But I from what I used to read in those comments, I doubt that Wilson would be shaking in his boots at any "intense criticism" of his "argument ... on Dan's blog"!
>especially Davor's full analysis of the Wilson case.
Since I wrote the above, I had a brief look at "Davor's full analysis of the Wilson case" under Dan's post, "Davor Aslanovski on the Edessa Image and the Shroud of Turin." I was less than impressed, in particular with his false claim "there is no evidence, textual or visual, that the Shroud and the Image of Edessa are really one and the same":
"What I wanted to say was simply this: there is no evidence, textual or visual, that the Shroud and the Image of Edessa are really one and the same. The Shroud, for all that we know, might be authentic. And it might even be the Image of Edessa. But, for the time being, there is no EVIDENCE for either."
See above that there is "evidence ... that the Shroud and the Image of Edessa are really one and the same." What Aslanovski (and his ilk) really mean is: "there is no evidence THAT I WOULD ACCEPT that the Shroud and the Image of Edessa are really one and the same." Such critics set the bar so high, that NO evidence for the Shroud being the Image of Edessa would suffice. Their position in this matter is actually Invincible Ignorance:
"There does remain, nonetheless, a cast of mind which seems peculiarly closed to evidence. When confronted with such a mind, one feels helpless, for no amount of evidence seems to be clinching. Frequently the facts are simply ignored or brushed aside as somehow deceptive, and the principles are reaffirmed in unshakable conviction. One seems confronted with what has been called `invincible ignorance.'" (Fearnside, W.W. & Holther, W.B., "Fallacy: The Counterfeit of Argument," 1959, p.113).
I am familiar with that absolutist debating tactic in my `former life' on Creation/Evolution forums. The debater sets up an insurmountably high standard of his acceptance, and from there he can snipe away at the opposing position. I found it be a near total waste of time debating such absolutists. Therefore I would regard comments that asserted, "there is no evidence that the Shroud and the Image of Edessa are one and the same" or "there is no evidence that the Shroud of Turin is authentic," etc, as "substandard," and therefore, according to my stated policy, they would not appear on my blog.
>I am waiting to see how Wilson responds to this before commenting further.
You will probably be "waiting" a long time. I doubt very much that Wilson reads comments on Dan's blog!
>So I am happy to leave the argument running until we hear more.
If you fail to answer my response to your claims, then readers can make up their own minds as to whether Wilson's `Shroud of Turin is the Edessa Cloth doubled-in-four theory' better fits the evidence than your `Shroud of Blachernae direct from Jerusalem to Constantinople with (other) fake relics theory.'
>Thanks for the debate.Phil.
You are correct that it is a "debate." So although I have been dragged into debating again, I am still going to avoid it becoming the long drawn out, never admit one is wrong even when one is, victory by exhaustion, threads that so plagued Creation/Evolution forums. So if a debate between two or more protagonists (including me) shows signs of this, I will direct it be terminated.
Stephen E. Jones
Phil
>There is apparently an alternative solution for tetrapylon referring it to the method with which the Image of Edessa was folded for storage.
It is tetradiplon, "doubled-in-four."
>The reference, according to Dan's blog, given is to Charles Freeman's article 'The Shroud of Turin and the Image of Edessa - A Misguided Journey.'
Charles Freeman is an agnostic, and an anti-Christian at that, so he has a built-in bias against accepting that the Shroud of Turin is the burial sheet of Jesus.
>This theory claims to undermine Wilson- I will leave it to you to follow up and judge but as it seems to be such a big part of Wilson's argument.
Here is that part of Freeman's "theory" that "claims to undermine Wilson":
"What arguments can Wilson provide for his attribution? ... He has tracked down one of the legendary accounts of the origins of the Image of Edessa in a sixth century text, the Acts of Thaddeus (or Jude). ... the Acts go on to describe the image as tetradiplon which seems to imply some form of doubling (diplon) taking place four (tetra) times. This is not difficult to explain. All cloth needs to be folded and stored against the damp and other molesters, and this is usually done in a wooden box or chest. This would be as necessary for the Image of Edessa as it would be for the Turin Shroud whenever the latter was made. Now how to store the Image of Edessa? It would clearly have been sacrilegious to have folded the sacred face of Christ and one would expect that the face would be fully visible when the protective box was opened. Now let us suppose the Image was four foot by four foot. Lay it on the ground, draw a horizontal fold across the cloth one foot down from the top and fold the resulting rectangle underneath the cloth. This is the first doubling. Repeat with the lower part of the cloth and then the two sides, so as to make four doublings, and you have a folded cloth, with the face, now in a two foot by two foot square, ready for storing in a much smaller box. As the Image of Edessa was never the Shroud of Turin in the first place, we do not need Ian Wilson’s elaborate explanation (p.190 ff.) of how the Shroud, as we know it today, could be folded into four!" (Freeman, C., "The Shroud of Turin and the Image of Edessa - A Misguided Journey," May 24, 2012).
First, as to Freeman's "let us suppose the Image was four foot by four foot." Depictions of the Image of Edessa, e.g. that in St. Catherine's Monastery (see "Image of Edessa," Wikipedia, 11 June 2012) show it as rectangular not square, with Jesus' face being depicted in landscape mode, which is highly unusual (if not unique) for a single face portrait. And Freeman's explanation simply won't work for a rectangular piece of cloth.
Second, Freeman's claim is that a mere folding of one-quarter of a cloth is "doubling" the whole of it. But it patently isn't.
[continued]
[continued]
Compare Freeman's fallacious explanation with my previous comment explaining how a true doubling-in-four of the Shroud yields Jesus' face in landscape mode-exactly as in copies of the Mandylion:
"If the Shroud of Turin is doubled-in-four (i.e. folded in two between the front and back head images), and then the doubled cloth is then folded four times so that the front head image (face) is uppermost, it looks exactly like copies of the image of Edessa. Try it yourself: 1) print out a full-length photo of the Shroud; 2) cut out the Shroud from the page; 3) fold the cutout of the Shroud in two between the two head images, with the front head image (face) uppermost; 4) then fold the doubled Shroud cutout into four with the face uppermost; 5) you hold in your hand a copy of the Mandylion - a portrait of Jesus head in landscape mode!"
Third, Freeman's attempt to make it seem as though tetradiplon is merely a routine description of folding any cloth ignores the fact that it is a unique word, only found in the entire ancient Greek literature "in association with the Image of Edessa":
"Even more pertinent is early information concerning possible folding. One sixth-century text relating to the Image of Edessa quite explicitly describes it as tetradiplon, `doubled in four.' A most curious choice of word, according to Cambridge University's Professor Lampe, editor of the Lexicon of Patristic Greek, in all literature it occurs only in association with the Image of Edessa, being scarcely, therefore, an idle turn of phrase. The word seems to mean doubled, then redoubled, then doubled again, i.e. doubling three times which has the effect of `doubling in four,' producing 4 x 2 folds. If the Shroud is folded in this manner, the result is unmistakable. The face alone appears, disembodied on a landscape-aspect background, in a manner of the most striking similarity to the early artists' copies of the Image of Edessa. The possibility can scarcely be ignored that if the Shroud was indeed preserved in this manner, the Byzantines might have kept it for centuries not realizing it was a shroud (or the Shroud), simply because the full-length figure had been sealed away long before their time." (Wilson, I., "The Evidence of the Shroud," 1986, pp.112,114).
Fourth, Freeman's, "As the Image of Edessa was never the Shroud of Turin in the first place ..." shows that his mind is closed to the possibility that the Image of Edessa is the Turin Shroud, doubled in four. That is, Freeman's position on the Shroud being the Image of Edessa, is really "invincible ignorance ... where the person in question simply refuses to believe the argument, ignoring any evidence given":
"Invincible ignorance fallacy ... The invincible ignorance fallacy is a deductive fallacy of circularity where the person in question simply refuses to believe the argument, ignoring any evidence given. It is not so much a fallacious tactic in argument as it is a refusal to argue in the proper sense of the word, the method instead being to make assertions with no consideration of objections." ("Invincible ignorance fallacy," Wikipedia, 11 May 2012).
>and it clearly means a lot to you too, it seemed worth mentioning.
Thanks.
>P.S. The relics listed by Wilson are not the same ones mentioned in a variety of fifth century documents relating to Pulcheria, the sister of the emperor Theodosius II and Eudocia the empress, both of whom brought relics back directly from Jerusalem, apparently of Stephen ( that should brighten your day) and a robe of the Virgin Mary.
Yes, see one of my previous comments above. But no mention of the full-length Shroud, which would have had pride of place if it had been included among these fake relics.
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen
What is your explanation for why the Mandylion only showed Christ's face for so long ie. the full body image of the Shroud, if it is one and the same as the Mandylion, was not shown.
The only explanation I can think of is that it was considered unacceptable to show Jesus's NUDE and BATTERED (ie. not risen and glorious) body image on the Shroud
Matt
>Thanks Stephen, I had heard of the Vignon markings but never explored them.
Glad to be of assistance.
>I must say I am not convinced by ALL the Vignon marking comparisons, but there are several that are very compelling.
Paul Vignon was an artist-biologist who personally inspected hundreds of Byzantine depictions of Christ and found 20 unique features on the Shroud which were depicted, to varying degrees, on them. Wilson reduced Vignon's 20 down to 15 reliable "Vignon markings".
>I think no. 13 at the base of the neck which I highlighted is one of the very compelling ones.
Agreed. The topless square on the forehead between the eyes is my (and Vignon's) favourite. It is just an imperfection of the weave which was copied slavishly by Byzantine artists.
>There can be no "coincidences" with that - there is a very clear and distinct horizontal line at the base of the neck on the Shroud, and on many of the Byzantine images of Christ.
Agreed. And since those Vignon markings are found on Byzantine icons going back to the 6th century, e.g. "Christ Pantocrator mosaic, Sant'Apollinare Nuovo church at Ravenna, Italy (6th century)," the Shroud original must date from before the 6th century.
Which in turn destroys almost all anti-authenticist theories (the sole exception that I am aware of is that of historian Robert Drews, in his 1984 book, "In Search of the Shroud of Turin," in which he claims the Shroud was created in the third to early fifth century by "some now-lost process of imprinting or thermography":
"One might thus propose that the Shroud's image was produced in the third or fourth century, or early in the fifth. ... The procedure that produced the image, however clever it may have been, might well have lapsed in the face of such indifference. If the Shroud's image was created, through some now-lost process of imprinting or thermography, as an imitation of Christ's crucified body, it is far more likely to have been created in late antiquity than in the late Middle Ages." (Drews, R., "In Search of the Shroud of Turin," 1984, pp.28-29).
Which just goes to show that even if the Shroud is C14 dated again, and yields a 1st to 5th century date, Shroud anti-authenticists can always take their final stand on "some now-lost process of imprinting or thermography"!
Stephen E. Jones
-----------------------------------
Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.
Stephen. I take your word for it that the word tetradiplon is ONLY used in reference to the image of Edessa and Freeman only provides an explanation that refers to the image of Edessa. In this sense he can hardly be criticised.
As I understand his argument, he is referring to four separate foldings, each doubling back one of the four sides of the cloth underneath itself. Freeman gives a hypothetical size for the cloth but surely his theory will work just as well with a rectangular cloth,the square with the face at the centre can be just as easily achieved if two of the sides folded back are longer than the other as they would be with a rectangle.
As tetradiplon is a unique word, one must rely on linguistic experts to decide whether it can be used to describe four separate doublings rather than doubled in four. Wilson is not, of course, such an expert and he makes no claim to be a Byzantinist so we must rely on others here.
I don't think Freeman argued that the whole cloth was doubled ,only,as I understand it, that the four sides of the Edessa cloth were doubled back under the cloth,keeping the centre and Christ's face clear.
Freeman is hardly alone in not believing that the image of Edessa is not the Turin Shroud- an increasing number of scholars are challenging Wilson on that so you can hardly call him' ignorant' for agreeing with a view that is being widely canvassed.As said earlier, the word tetradiplon is applied only to the Image of Edessa- it is Wilson's initiative so far as one can see to extend the word to cover the Shroud of Turin and surely it is up to him to justify this extension. Freeman seems to be keeping closer to the original text with its reference only to the mage of Edessa.
I leave it to others to show the many difficulties with Wilson's arguments- at least two long critiques can be found on or via Dan's blog and ,as said before, one awaits his responses to what are fairly devastating critiques.
I've read Freeman's paper "a misguided Journey" several times and still cannot believe how in error he is on so many things. If there is anything misguided it is Freeman's thinking. He dismisses important details, such as the Mandylion was of a rectangle shape as noted in many depictions and the importance of the unique term tetradiplon-a word never found in anyother writings!. He speculates on so many other details I don't have time too mention. Anyone who relies on Freeman's paper as a base for their anti-authenticity or the anti-Wilson Mandylion/ Shroud theory, should really get their heads examined or atleast clear their heads, read as much as possible then review Freeman's rediculous paper again.
F3
Stephen
I went to the University of Adelaide this morning to view a wonderful book in two volumes "Iconography of Christian Art" by G. Schiller. Highly recommended.
The books had numerous plates with a huge selection of artistic representations of Jesus. There were at least 15 images of Jesus portrayed by German artists from the early to mid 1400s, the movement that I referred to earlier where Jesus's physical suffering was much more vividly portrayed, with body wide wounds including scourging.
This impressive and authoritative work also confirms that it was not until this German movement that depictions of Jesus showed this widespread suffering.
Schiller discussed Byzantine art, noting in its earlier form it showed Jesus risen and glorified, never suffering. Then around the 9th / 10th century, this evolved so that Jesus's suffering was shown, but in a very subtle way, with wounds usually confined to the discrete and "polite" hand piercings, side wound etc.
Conclusion: there is a total absence of artistic representations showing Jesus's widespread and severe body wounds until the early / mid 1400s. The theory that the shroud was created during the period of the carbon dating - a period when Jesus' suffering was still shown in very subtle ways - makes absolutely no sense from an art history perspective.
Similarly, it makes no sense that the Shroud was created by an artist in much earlier times. From an art history perspective, the only period in which it would make sense for the Shroud to be created by human hands was from the early / mid 1400s to early 1500s. However as reference to the Shroud is made in historical records in the mid 1300s, it could not have possibly been created in this period.
This art history context, I believe, provides compelling evidence for the Shroud's authenticity.
Flagrum 3. Who is actually going to take Freeman's paper on, yourself, Stephen or Wilson himself? I assume most people have read it by now but it would be good to have some more specific feedback than we have here.
Matt
>Thanks for the Goska link, I guess I was coming from a similar position ie. it makes no sense that the shroud would have been created by an artistic GENIUS during the period of the carbon dating, as the body-wide torturous infliction was simply not depicted in representations of Jesus at the time.
Agreed. And that is the agnostic art historian de Wesselow's point too, which forced him to accept the Shroud as authentic, even though he does not accept that Jesus was resurrected. For Shroud anti-authenticists to continue to claim that the Shroud is a 12-14th century forgery (of any kind: painting, bas relief rubbing, etc) is a prime example of "flogging a dead horse":
"Flogging a dead horse... is an idiom that means a particular request or line of conversation is already foreclosed or otherwise resolved, and any attempt to continue it is futile; or that to continue in any endeavour (physical, mental, etc.) is a waste of time as the outcome is already decided." ("Flogging a dead horse," Wikipedia, 15 June 2012).
>You could alternatively argue that it didn't matter how the art of Jesus of the period was represented, rather the GENIUS was trying to faithfully recreate markings of Jesus consistent with the bibical accounts which included scourging - regardless of whether the art of the time (apparently universally) did not show the body-wide scourging. But if this argument was mounted, I would find it hard to buy, as cultural expectations are highly influential.
Agreed. The problem with that argument is that, while the Shroud does fit the Biblical account of Jesus' scourging, burial and crucifixion, it does not, in important respects, fit the medieval understanding of the same. For example, the Shroud's depiction of Jesus' naked, with a cap of thorns instead of a wreath, nailed through His wrists instead of His palms, is consistent (or at least not inconsistent) with the Bible, but it is inconsistent with traditional medieval depictions of same:
"The forger working in France or thereabouts around or before 1350 would have to have been either an overzealous monk whose piety got the better of him or an arrogant swindler who wanted to make a bundle in the underground relic market. Both of these possibilities strike me as unlikely, since the portrayal of Jesus on the shroud is nontraditional, non-European; details like the cap or miter of thorns, the nails through the wrists instead of through the palms, and the nakedness of the loins would not inspire the devotional or artistic sensibilities of fourteenth-century Europe; rather they would have gotten the forger burned at the stake. Moreover, the accuracy of details like these would not be common knowledge to a potential forger for centuries to come." (Wilcox, R.K., "Shroud," 1977, pp.170-171).
And as Goska pointed out, a forger of the Shroud would have no reason to depict Jesus' crucifixion non-traditionally:
"The Shroud does more than not follow the simple rules of relic hawkers. The Shroud not only does not follow the laws of the expressive culture of medieval relics, it defies them. For example, blood is shown flowing from the man's wrist, not his hands. It is standard in Christian iconography to depict Jesus' hands as having been pierced by nails. This was true not only of the medieval era, but also today. What reason would a forging artist have for defying the hegemonic iconography of the crucified Jesus? Anyone who wishes to prove a medieval origin for the Shroud must answer that question, and others ..." (Goska, D.V., "The Shroud of Turin???," 11 April 2007)
[continued]
[continued]
>It is interesting that the German movement of the mid to late 1400s did show Jesus in all his horrific body-wide infliction - more consistent with the Shroud. As you question Stephen, did these artists happen to view the Shroud and be influenced by it?
Germany is not far from Constantinople (at its closest point they are only about 1470 km/910 miles apart), so there is no reason why some Germans did not see the Shroud, at about the same time as the Hungarian artist who painted the Pray Manuscript. This was probably during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1118-80), who "made alliances with the Pope and the resurgent west" and "was influenced by his contact with western Crusaders":
"Manuel I Komnenos (or Comnenus) ... (28 November 1118 – 24 September 1180) was a Byzantine Emperor of the 12th century who reigned over a crucial turning point in the history of Byzantium and the Mediterranean. Eager to restore his empire to its past glories as the superpower of the Mediterranean world, Manuel pursued an energetic and ambitious foreign policy. In the process he made alliances with the Pope and the resurgent west ... Manuel, who was influenced by his contact with western Crusaders, enjoyed the reputation of `the most blessed emperor of Constantinople' in parts of the Latin world as well." ("Manuel I Komnenos," Wikipedia, 25 June 2012).
Also, the Fourth Crusade, which sacked Constantinople in 1204, in which Robert de Clari saw the Shroud:
"Robert may be one of the few documented witnesses to the Shroud of Turin before 1358. He reports (1203) that the cloth was in Constantinople: `Where there was the Shroud in which our Lord had been wrapped, which every Friday raised itself upright so one could see the figure of our Lord on it." ("Robert de Clari," Wikipedia, 18 April 2012)
was comprised of "Crusaders of Western Europe":
"The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and sacked the Christian (Eastern Orthodox) city of Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire). This is seen as one of the final acts in the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church, and a key turning point in the decline of the Empire and of Christianity in the Near East." ("Fourth Crusade," Wikipedia, 28 June 2012).
which presumably would have included many Germans who also would have seen "the Shroud in which our Lord had been wrapped" with "the figure of our Lord on it".
And also there may well have been many Germans among the thousands of pilgrims who saw the Shroud exhibited at Lirey, France in the 1350s and the 1380s. Lirey is only about 330 kms/210 miles from the German border.
>Or were there other cultural or theological influences that led to this representation?
It may be that medieval Germans and Hungarians had less cultural and/or theological inhibitions than Greeks, French and Italians in depicting the crucified Jesus realistically, i.e. naked with wounds and bloodstains.
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen
Just another thought.
Surely, if the Shroud was a medieval fake, the genius faker would not only have shown a blood wound on one hand, rather than the wrist, but the other? It is simply not coherent to think that a genius artist would have shown a blood wound on one wrist / hand rather than two, when basically every piece of art EVER shows wounds on both hands (or no wounds).
In my humble opinion, this is another very strong factor in support of authenticity.
To Anonymous;
It is not my place here to "Take-On" Freeman's paper. I'll leave that up to Stephen, if he wishes. I wouldn't bother wasting my time taking on such irresponsible writings.
Sorry Stephen for hi-jacking here.
F3
Flagrum3
>I've read Freeman's paper "a misguided Journey" several times and still cannot believe how in error he is on so many things.
I haven't read it in full, but what I have read, his explaining away the reference in the 6th century The Acts of Thaddeus to the Mandylion/Image of Eddessa being tetradiplon "doubled-in-four" is absurdly false. E.g. that folding over a quarter of a cloth four times is doubling the whole cloth!
Freeman just ignores Wilson's major point that if the Shroud is doubled between the front and back head image, and then the doubled cloth is folded four times, one arrives at Jesus' head in landscape mode - exactly as the Image of Edessa/Mandylion is depicted!
Freemans's dismissal of Wilson's Vignon markings evidence as "bizarre" shows that the agnostic Freeman has an invincibly ignorant closed mind on the authenticity of the Shroud.
>If there is anything misguided it is Freeman's thinking. He dismisses important details, such as the Mandylion was of a rectangle shape as noted in many depictions and the importance of the unique term tetradiplon-a word never found in anyother writings!
Agreed. It is almost unbelievable that a scholar of Freeman's standing could be so unscholarly.
But then, if Freeman accepts Wilson's historical and artistic arguments for the authenticity of the Shroud, as de Wesselow did:
"One hot, bright morning in the early summer of 2004 I ambled out into the orchard beside my house in Cambridge, lay down on the grass and immersed myself in The Turin Shroud by Ian Wilson. ... Leafing through its arguments and illustrations, I became caught up in the Shroud's mystery as never before, exploring its apparent paradoxes with a refreshing sense of intellectual abandon. ... Though sceptical of the relic's authenticity, for all the usual reasons, I was nevertheless fascinated by some of the historical evidence Wilson presented. Various texts he cited - such as Robert de Clari's account of the Byzantine cloth on which 'the figure of Our Lord could be plainly seen' did seem to point to a Shroud-like relic existing long before the fourteenth century, the date indicated by the problematic carbon-14 test. Moreover, I was aware by then of the major clue first recognized by Andre Dubarle: the distinctive pattern of the 'poker-holes' found on the representation of Christ's burial cloth in the Pray Codex. Unable to dismiss this as a coincidence, I found myself forced to reckon with the heretical idea that the Shroud was already known in the twelfth century. I also had to admit that Wilson's identification of the Shroud with the Mandylion was plausible and accounted for a good deal of evidence that, as far as I could see, orthodox opinion either ignored or dismissed without proper justification. ...
[continued]
[continued]
... If Wilson's theory was correct, the Shroud's provenance could be traced back to the sixth century. And if it was that old, the chances of its being a fake were drastically reduced. As an agnostic, used to thinking about Jesus in conventional Christian terms, I was extremely uncomfortable with the idea that the Shroud might be an authentic marvel; and, as an art historian familiar with the merry-go-round of medieval relics, I was extremely sceptical that this one - the most astonishing of all - might be genuine. Nevertheless, having considered every alternative explanation and found it wanting, I felt pinned down and forced to think the unthinkable. The execution and burial of Jesus, I told myself, is the only recorded event that could have resulted in a length of linen becoming stained by the body of a man flogged, crucified, crowned with thorns and speared in the side, and it is an event that is unlikely ever to have been exactly repeated. I couldn't avoid the conclusion: from a purely historical point of view, the death and burial of Jesus seemed to be the best explanation for the Shroud." (de Wesselow, T., "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," 2012, pp.192-193).
Freeman knows he would be become a target of academic scorn (as de Wesselow has) and be on the slippery slope to becoming a Christian (as de Wesselow has not - yet).
>He speculates on so many other details I don't have time too mention. Anyone who relies on Freeman's paper as a base for their anti-authenticity or the anti-Wilson Mandylion/ Shroud theory, should really get their heads examined or atleast clear their heads, read as much as possible then review Freeman's rediculous paper again.
The problem is not Freeman and his anti-Christian ilk's heads but their hearts. They don't want Christianity to be true, so when confronted with hard evidence that it is, in the Shroud, their anti-Christian hearts tell their heads to find any excuse (no matter how feeble) not to accept it!
Even de Wesselow, when his head couldn't deny that the Shroud was authentic, his anti-Christian heart wouldn't let him believe that Christianity was true, but instead told him to believe the Monty Pythonesque `explanation' that Jesus' image on the Shroud was His resurrection!
However, as Christians we must not get angry, or scornful, but feel a deep, prayerful sorrow for these poor anti-Christian agnostics, like Freeman and de Wesselow, whose minds have been taken captive:
Colossians 2:8 "See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ."
by the academic world's all-pervading philosophy of Naturalism (nature is all there is-there is no supernatural).
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen. I am surprised that you equate thse who deny the authenticity of the Shroud with being anti-Christian. Leave aside Freeman and de Wesselow, the movement against relics came first within the Catholic Church in the fifteenth century ,then through skeptical Catholics such as Erasmus,who argued that many relics he encountered were clearly fakes.
Then on into the Protestant World. The argument was that by relying so heavily on physical objects for veneration, faith in Christ himself and the scriptures was being denied.So the Protestants went so far as to destroy relics- in England the Shroud of Turin would have been burned with the rest during the Reformation.
So it is important to remember that the original anti- Shroudies would have been Protestant Christians, not atheists. So far as I know the atheists, unlike the Protestants of the sixteenth century, have not yet argued that the Shroud of Turin be burned, so count your blessings!
But , when I see thse impassioned debates about the physical/scentific nature of the Shroud,I do sympathise with the Protestants for their theological views about relics. The veneration of the Shroud does seem to have quite far from the Christian faith as it has usually been understood by Protestants!(Catholics see it all differently, of course.)
Further to my 8.26pm comment on 30 June.
It is interesting to view the 1516 copy, the copyist significantly showed the shroud with wounds clearly visible on BOTH hands, unlike the original which only shows a wound on one wrist.
This reinforces the ODDNESS (if the real Shroud is a fake) of hand wounds not shown on BOTH hands.
The fact is, the shroud is authentic, the wound on one wrist is covered by the other hand organically and without artifice. An artist could (and WOULD if he was seeking to create a credible and believable relic consistent with the Bible)have gone to pains to reveal wounds on BOTH hands, like the copyist of 1516 does.
It's also worth reinforcing the prominence the 1516 copyist has given to the poker holes. Some anti-authenticitists have questioned why the Pray Manuscript artist would have portrayed the "inconsequential" poker holes. Well, before the later fires, the poker holes were clearly a prominent feature. This adds credibility to why the Pray Manuscript artist might have
represented them.
Anne. J
>Stephen. I am surprised that you equate thse who deny the authenticity of the Shroud with being anti-Christian
I didn't. Read my comment again. I was talking about those who:
"... don't want Christianity to be true, so when confronted with hard evidence that it is, in the Shroud, their anti-Christian hearts tell their heads to find any excuse (no matter how feeble) not to accept it!"
In particular I was talking about those scholars, like Freeman, who know the evidence for the Shroud's authenticity but chose to disbelieve it.
If you had been reading my posts long enough you will know that I myself, an evangelical Protestant Christian, for ~38 years, to the extent that I thought about it at all, asumed that the Shroud was a fake Roman Catholic relic.
But when I was confronted for the evidence of the Shroud, in Stevenson & Habermas' "Verdict on the Shroud" (1981), I accepted it was authentic.
Also I have many times commented that most Christians I know are indifferent to the Shroud or even against it. But clearly they are not against the Shroud because "they don't want Christianity to be true..."!
They are against the Shroud out of ignorance, or prejudice, or misguided zeal, etc.
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen. Are you saying that the case for the authenticity of the Shroud is so strong hat it is impossible to hold independent scholarly views that deny it?
Anne
>Stephen. Are you saying that the case for the authenticity of the Shroud is so strong hat it is impossible to hold independent scholarly views that deny it?
Yes. The proof's in the pudding. Those scholars who deny the authenticity of the Shroud ALL, without exception, misstate and misrepresent the evidence for it.
Freeman is just one example.
The evidence is simply overwhelming that the Shroud of Turin is the burial sheet of Jesus, bearing the evidence of His crowned with thorns, scourged, crucified and resurrected body!
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen. Thank you for clarifyiing that that this is essentially a site which is dedicated to defending the authenticity of the Shroud- there are quite a lot of sites around and it is confusing for beginners as to who holds what views and who debates what kinds of issues. On the site run by 'Dan' they seem to have real arguments over the authenticity,etc..
P.S. find it quite difficult to read your ' I am not a robot' box. The lettering of often illegible and have to start again- anyone else have this problem?
Anne
>Thank you for clarifyiing that that this is essentially a site which is dedicated to defending the authenticity of the Shroud-
Actually it isn't, in the sense that Shroud anti-authenticists are welcome to comment as long as they abide by my policies (see below).
But for me personally, as this blog's `masthead' says: "I am persuaded by the evidence that the Shroud of Turin is the burial sheet of Jesus Christ and bears His crucified and resurrected image."
>there are quite a lot of sites around and it is confusing for beginners as to who holds what views and who debates what kinds of issues.
Well there is no doubt where I stand!
>On the site run by 'Dan' they seem to have real arguments over the authenticity,etc..
I was a member of Dan's blog once, so I would beg to differ with you about the "real."
I am less tolerant than Dan of what I call the `empty vessels which make the most noise' about the Shroud. That is, those who comment a lot about the Shroud, but it is evident from their comments that they have never read a book on it.
It is OK to not have read a book on the Shroud and comment on this blog. But it is not OK on this blog to pretend that one is an expert on the Shroud, yet having never read a pro-authenticity book on it.
I have permanently banned Colin Berry/Sciencebod, for example, because of his continual flouting of my stated policies, in making off-topic, substandard and offensive comments.
>P.S. find it quite difficult to read your ' I am not a robot' box. The lettering of often illegible and have to start again- anyone else have this problem?
That's a Blogger issue. As Moderator I don't see the 'I am not a robot' box for this blog, but I agree they can be hard to read. I have found that after multiple tries eventually a clearer series of letters/numbers appears and you can make your comment.
Stephen E. Jones
-----------------------------------
Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.
Stephen
In the interests of fairness, I am always prepared to listen to alternative points of view. I have been reading Colin Berry's theory on the Lirey Badge today. He gets top marks for originality, at least. I found the theory interesting, and was willing to give it a go.
Now let's just assume for the moment that MAYBE the Pray Manuscript image wasn't influenced by a viewing of the Shroud, and the other strands of pre-13th century evidence didn't exist.
Would his theory then have any credibility?
For me, some key problems with his theory include:
- He assumes that the persona on the badge is not Jesus, but The Knight Templar. Reasons for this includes the fact that he does not consider the figure to be Christ like (lack of beard etc), and that the figure has the following characteristics that make him think it was the Knight templar being burnt at the stake:
- Raw bone exposed knees
- items below the feet reminiscent of flames
- on the rear image of the figure a chain running along the bottom of the back and just to the right and left sides of the figure: victims of burning at the stake were chained to the stake
now some thoughts of mine on this:
- It is impossible to tell at such a small scale whether or not the figure has a beard or not
- I don't think the raw knees are signs of a figure being burnt at the stake, rather just the product of an metal artist struggling with conveying a human figure at very small scale. The overall figure is not convincing at all
- the objects below the feet flames?: maybe
- the chain: maybe, but just as possibly the blood marks at the bottom of Jesus's back (and just to the right and left of his back, relating to the back of the forearms) on the Shroud.
Maybe, just maybe, the badge IS a double entendre on the Knight Templar and the Jesus of the Shroud. But that doesn't invalidate arguments as to the Shroud's authenticity. This may have simply been a play on the Shroud which they managed to have in their possession.
He goes on to theorize that there was a "Mark 1" version of the Shroud, which was an image of the Knight Templar produced from a hot bas relief. He then goes on to theorize that a "Mark 2" was created, which is the Shroud of Turin. This was then exhibited publicly, which was a lucrative exercise, attracting paying viewers.
Key questions remain:
- how could such a convincing image be created? It's one thing to make a linen scorch from an ethnic mask as Colin does, another to create the Shroud in all its complexity!!!
- The metal worker who made the badge didn't do a very convincing version of a human figure, albeit it was at a small scale. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence that a full scale anatomically correct statue would be created from the same circle of people
- If the Shroud was created for public viewing, then it seems curious that the artist did not create the artwork to show wounds in both palms of the hands, consistent with all other art works in history (other than art that shows no wounds on the hands). The Shroud has a wound only on one hand, and that is near the wrist area, hardly consistent with essentially universal representations of wounds in the centre of the palms
- There's other questions..... why wasn't Jesus's modesty protected with the usual clothes around the mid region, why was such severe body wide infliction shown in the image when the art of the time universally showed only polite and discrete wounds in the hands, side and feet (maybe the head if you are lucky)- it wasn't till the early-mid 1400s that German artists began to show Christ's severe body wide inflictions
Thoughts?
Phil
First, I note that you have not responded to my request of June 29 for clarification of your position
>>Please clarify whether you accept that: 1) "the Turin Shroud" which we have today is "the Blachernae Shroud" which crusader Robert de Clari described seeing in Constantinople in 1203 ... and 2) whether you accept that "the Turin Shroud" we have today is the burial sheet of Jesus, bearing the image of His crucified and resurrected body. Thanks.
Therefore I will assume (unless you advise me to the contrary) that you DO NOT accept that: 1) "the Turin Shroud" which we have today is "the Blachernae Shroud" which crusader Robert de Clari described seeing in Constantinople in 1203; and 2) you DO NOT accept that "the Turin Shroud" we have today is the burial sheet of Jesus, bearing the image of His crucified and resurrected body.
>Stephen. My thesis rests on the fact that Wilson can show no evidence for a shroud having got to Edessa before the sixth century,
What evidence WOULD YOU ACCEPT that the Turin Shroud was in Edessa as the Mandylion before the sixth century?
>only the letter is mentioned before the 540s at the earliest-
When you answer my above question on what evidence YOU WOULD ACCEPT that the Mandylion was the Turin Shroud doubled-in-four in Edessa, I will try to provide you with that evidence.
>so an arrival in Constantinople in the fifth century would predate anything Wilson can provide evidence for.
See above. There is no point me continuing to provide you with evidence that the Turin Shroud was in Edessa, as the Mandylion, before the sixth century, until you state in advance what evidence YOU WOULD ACCEPT that it was.
>The question is whether there is documentation ( which does not mean ,of course, the shroud did not travel)
See above.
>There is,I understand from a historian contact, a great deal of documentation in Greek histories of early Christianity about the relationship between Constantinople and Jerusalem, much never translated so i am impressed that you have read it all and know that no shroud is documented there.
See above.
>If other named relics are documented as coming direct from Jerusalem to Constantinople in the fifth century ,this may have been because they were preserved in Jerusalem.
See above.
>We know there was a piece of the cross there into the sixth century because it was looted from there by the Persians.
See above.
>The legend that Arcalf saw a shroud in Jerusalem in the 680s shows that there may have been relics around and the Crusaders brought back many more.
See above.
>They could,of course, all have been fakes but so could the Turin Shroud.
See also above on my assumption that you DO NOT accept that "the Turin Shroud" we have today is the burial sheet of Jesus, bearing the image of His crucified and resurrected body. That is, your position is that the Turin Shroud IS a fake. Please advise if this assumption of mine is not correct. Thanks.
Stephen E. Jones
Matt
>Was talking to a friend today about the Pray Manuscript. I pointed out to him one of your 12 points, the hands without thumbs. He questioned the significance, maybe the thumbs are just hidden he said, or maybe the artist was struggling on a small drawing? Or maybe he was just lazy?
Or "maybe" they were there and fell off? :-)
Sounds like your friend is infected with the disease of Invincible Ignorance regarding the authenticity of the Shroud:
"invincible ignorance - the fallacy of insisting on the legitimacy of one's position in the face of contradictory facts. Statements like `I really don't care what the experts say; no one is going to convince me that I'm wrong'; `nothing you say is going to change my mind'; `yeah, okay, whatever!' are examples of this fallacy." ("Logical Fallacies: Invincible Ignorance," Philosophical Society.com, 11 April 2011).
You might point out to your friend that ONE ad hoc argument for ONE of the 12 congruent features shared between the Pray Manuscript and the Shroud, might just possibly be true.
But he could need a different ad hoc argument for EACH of the TWELVE congruent features shared between the Pray Manuscript and the Shroud.
>My response was that he didn't find any difficulty drawing thumbs on other characters on Plate III. And I also pointed out to him that with the exception of the left hand of the upper image of Jesus on Plate III, when thumbs are hidden in the image it makes total sense from a perspective point of view. However the perspective of Jesus's left hand would have demanded that the thumb be shown (it makes sense that the thumb on the right hand is not shown from a perspective point of view, regardless of whether or not that thumb was shown on the Shroud.)
Agreed.
>Thoughts?
If one doesn't WANT something to be true, then one can always find a reason, however feeble, NOT to believe it.
But like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand, REFUSING to see something does not mean it's NOT THERE!
Stephen E. Jones
Matt
>What is your explanation for why the Mandylion only showed Christ's face for so long ie. the full body image of the Shroud, if it is one and the same as the Mandylion, was not shown.
The most obvious explanation is what you suggest below, i.e. it was not culturally acceptable to show Jesus nude and bloodstained body.
The early Christian Church went through a period of Gnosticism, in which Jesus' deity was emphasised and His humanity downplayed.
Another factor probably was the Jews (including some Jewish Christians) would have regarded a bloodstained burial cloth as unclean. You can read in Paul's letter to the Galatians and the Book of Acts, the struggles the early church had with the Jews.
As I pointed out in my "Re: John Calvin on the Shroud" for several centuries the Christian church was a tiny minority persecuted by its much more powerful enemies, the Jews and the Romans. If the Church had made it public that they had Jesus' burial shroud, bearing the imprint of His body, the Jews and Romans would have demanded they hand it over, or face torture and/death.
Also, a bloodstained burial robe of Jesus would give some sort of credence to the official Jewish story that the disciples stole Jesus' body (Mt 28:11-15).
In fact the Shroud was probably more of a liability to the early church than an asset. The first Christians KNEW that Jesus had been resurrected, because He had APPEARED TO THEM:
Acts 1:3 "He [Jesus] presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God."
1Cor 15:3-8 "3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me."
They didn't need the Shroud to prove it to themselves.
And, then as now, showing Jesus' image in the Shroud to those who don't want to believe it, would only make them say it was either: 1) a fake; 2) a result of some strange natural process, or 3) created by the Devil (as some Christians today claim).
>The only explanation I can think of is that it was considered unacceptable to show Jesus's NUDE and BATTERED (ie. not risen and glorious) body image on the Shroud
Agreed that might be the main reason. But see above for other possible reasons, all of which are not mutually exclusive.
Stephen E. Jones
>But he could need a different ad hoc argument for EACH of the TWELVE congruent features shared between the Pray Manuscript and the Shroud.
That should be: "But he would need a different ad hoc argument ...
Also:
>You can read in Paul's letter to the Galatians and the Book of Acts, the struggles the early church had with the Jews.
I meant "with Jewish Christians".
That is Judaizing elements within Christianity. Those Jewish Christians who insisted that the Law of Moses was binding on Gentile Christians.
Jesus' bloodstained burial shroud would have been anathema to such Jewish Christians.
One way around that would be to double the Shroud in four, so that only Jesus' head could be seen, albeit in lanscape mode, and encase it in a frame, so that Jesus' naked, bloodstained and wounded body could not be seen.
Which is exactly what the Mandylion was! See "Mandylion (c. 1100). Fresco in the Sakli Church, Goreme, Turkey" at "Turin Shroud: Relic or Hoax?," January 30, 2009"
Stephen E.Jones
Phil
First, you still have not responded to my assumptions:
-----------------------------------
Therefore I will assume (unless you advise me [by comment here] to the contrary) that you DO NOT accept that: 1) "the Turin Shroud" which we have today is "the Blachernae Shroud" which crusader Robert de Clari described seeing in Constantinople in 1203; and 2) you DO NOT accept that "the Turin Shroud" we have today is the burial sheet of Jesus, bearing the image of His crucified and resurrected body.
-----------------------------------
Second, you have not responded to my question:
-----------------------------------
What evidence WOULD YOU ACCEPT that the Turin Shroud was in Edessa as the Mandylion before the sixth century?
-----------------------------------
I therefore assume (unless you advise by comment here to the contrary), that NO evidence would be sufficient for you to accept that the Turin Shroud was in Edessa as the Mandylion before the sixth century.
Third, you still have not responded to my assumption that your position is that the Turin Shroud is a fake:
-----------------------------------
See also above on my assumption that you DO NOT accept that "the Turin Shroud" we have today is the burial sheet of Jesus, bearing the image of His crucified and resurrected body. That is, your position is that the Turin Shroud IS a fake. Please advise if this assumption of mine is not correct.
-----------------------------------
I therefore assume (unless you advise by comment here to the contrary), that your position is that the Turin Shroud is a fake.
>Stephen. I take your word for it that the word tetradiplon is ONLY used in reference to the image of Edessa
It was not merely my word. I provided a QUOTE from Wilson (citing a Cambridge University Professor of Greek and editor of a Greek Lexicon), that tetradiplon "doubled in four" is found only in ALL of known ancient Greek literature "in association with the Image of Edessa":
"Even more pertinent is early information concerning possible folding. One sixth-century text relating to the Image of Edessa quite explicitly describes it as tetradiplon, `doubled in four.' A most curious choice of word, according to Cambridge University's Professor Lampe, editor of the Lexicon of Patristic Greek, in all literature it occurs only in association with the Image of Edessa, being scarcely, therefore, an idle turn of phrase. The word seems to mean doubled, then redoubled, then doubled again, i.e. doubling three times which has the effect of `doubling in four,' producing 4 x 2 folds. If the Shroud is folded in this manner, the result is unmistakable. The face alone appears, disembodied on a landscape-aspect background, in a manner of the most striking similarity to the early artists' copies of the Image of Edessa. The possibility can scarcely be ignored that if the Shroud was indeed preserved in this manner, the Byzantines might have kept it for centuries not realizing it was a shroud (or the Shroud), simply because the full-length figure had been sealed away long before their time." (Wilson, I., "The Evidence of the Shroud," 1986, pp.112,114).
[continued]
[continued]
>and Freeman only provides an explanation that refers to the image of Edessa. In this sense he can hardly be criticised.
Freeman deliberately misled his readers by failing to inform them that tetradiplon "doubled in four" is found ONLY in "in association with the Image of Edessa." Since he must have been aware of it, Freeman can be criticised for deliberately withholding important information from his readers, which if they had been aware of it, would cause them to doubt Freeman's attempt to explain away the significance of ONLY the Image of Edessa being referred to as tetradiplon doubled in four.
>As I understand his argument, he is referring to four separate foldings, each doubling back one of the four sides of the cloth underneath itself.
Here is that part of Freeman's "The Shroud of Turin and the Image of Edessa - A Misguided Journey":
"Now let us suppose the Image was four foot by four foot. Lay it on the ground, draw a horizontal fold across the cloth one foot down from the top and fold the resulting rectangle underneath the cloth. This is the first doubling. Repeat with the lower part of the cloth and then the two sides, so as to make four doublings, and you have a folded cloth, with the face, now in a two foot by two foot square, ready for storing in a much smaller box."
The first problem with Freeman's explanation is that four successive folding back of 1 foot from the edge of a 4 x 4 foot cloth is not "four doublings" OF THE WHOLE CLOTH. It actually is folding only 3/4 of the whole cloth: top edge 1/4, bottom edge 1/4, left edge 1/8 and right edge 1/8, a total of 3/4. And the left and right 1 foot edges are not doubled, they are QUADRUPLED, while the remaining centre 1/4 has NOT BEEN DOUBLED at all. Try it yourself with a paper scale model of a 4 x 4 foot square, divided into a grid of 4 x 4 = 16 cells of 1/16th each.
The second problem with this is that, as Freeman states, it results in a "two foot by two foot square." But copies of the Image of Edessa (e.g. at St Catherine's Monastery and Sakli Church), show it as a RECTANGLE with Jesus' face in the centre of the rectangle in landscape mode.
The third problem with Freeman's explanation is its ORDINARINESS. It does not warrant a unique word tetradiplon "doubled in four" being coined to describe it.
The fourth problem with Freeman's explanation is that again he deliberately misled his readers by failing to inform them that when the Shroud of Turin is doubled over between the two head images, and then the doubled Shroud is then folded over four times with the front head image (face) kept uppermost, it results in an exact copy of the Image of Edessa with Jesus' head centred in a rectangle in landscape mode:
[continued]
[continued]
"For me a crucial breakthrough in overcoming this objection surfaced in the 1960s, when I noticed how a sixth-century Greek version of the Abgar story, the `Acts of the Holy Apostle Thaddaeus', describes the Edessa cloth as a tetradiplon. In all the corpus of Greek literature tetradiplon is an extremely rare word, and totally exclusive to the Edessa cloth. Yet, because it is a combination of two common words, tetra meaning `four' and diplon meaning `two fold' or `doubled', its meaning is actually very clear: `doubled in four', suggesting four times two folds. This immediately raised the thought: `What happens if you try giving the Shroud four times two folds?' When I tried this, using a full-length photograph of the Shroud, I was dumb-founded by the result - as I continue to be today. There was the Shroud face, front-facing and disembodied-looking on a landscape aspect cloth, exactly as on the earliest artists' copies of the cloth of Edessa." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," 2000, pp.110-111).
>Freeman gives a hypothetical size for the cloth but surely his theory will work just as well with a rectangular cloth,the square with the face at the centre can be just as easily achieved if two of the sides folded back are longer than the other as they would be with a rectangle.
First, Freeman actually said "SQUARE" not "rectangle." By changing his "square" to "rectangle" you are tacitly conceding that Freeman is WRONG!
Second, making Freeman's "square" a "rectangle" works EVEN WORSE (which is probably why Freeman used a "square" in his attempted explanation. Try it, make a paper scale model of a 6 x 4 foot rectangle, and mark it with a 6 x 4 grid of 24 cells, each 1/24th of the whole cloth. You will find it actually is folding only 2/3 of the whole cloth: top edge 1/4, bottom edge 1/4, left edge 1/12 and right edge 1/12, a total of 2/3. And again the left and right 1 foot edges are not doubled, but are QUADRUPLED, while the remaining centre 1/3 has again NOT BEEN DOUBLED at all.
>As tetradiplon is a unique word, one must rely on linguistic experts to decide whether it can be used to describe four separate doublings rather than doubled in four. Wilson is not, of course, such an expert and he makes no claim to be a Byzantinist so we must rely on others here.
Thanks for admitting tetradiplon is a unique word. Therefore it must describe a unique method of doubling.
You are welcome to try to find a "linguistic expert" in ancient Greek, who will agree with Freeman's explanation of tetradiplon over Wilson's. And your "Wilson is not ... such an expert and he makes no claim to be a Byzantinist" ignores the fact that neither are you, and Wilson HAS consulted such Greek and Byzantine experts.
Moreover, Wilson's explanation WORKS and yields Jesus' face centred in a RECTANGLE in landscape mode, EXACTLY like copies of the Image of Edessa. Freeman's explanation, on the other hand yields NOTHING LIKE the Image of Edessa. Even you tacitly admit this by attempting to change Freeman's "square" to a "rectangle".
>I don't think Freeman argued that the whole cloth was doubled ,only,as I understand it, that the four sides of the Edessa cloth were doubled back under the cloth,keeping the centre and Christ's face clear.
Thanks for admitting that in Freeman's explanation the whole cloth was NOT doubled. But in Wilson's explanation it IS.
[continued]
[continued]
>Freeman is hardly alone in not believing that the image of Edessa is not the Turin Shroud- an increasing number of scholars are challenging Wilson on that so you can hardly call him' ignorant' for agreeing with a view that is being widely canvassed.
I did not say that Freeman was "ignorant." I said he was INVINCIBLY ignorant in respect of the authenticity of the Shroud, i.e. "where the person in question simply REFUSES TO BELIEVE the argument, IGNORING any evidence given." ("Invincible ignorance fallacy," Wikipedia, 11 May 2012).
>As said earlier, the word tetradiplon is applied only to the Image of Edessa- it is Wilson's initiative so far as one can see to extend the word to cover the Shroud of Turin and surely it is up to him to justify this extension.
He has already done that. See above.
>Freeman seems to be keeping closer to the original text with its reference only to the mage of Edessa.
An irrelevant point. Wilson's argument actually IS that from at least the 6th to the 10th centuries, no one realised that the Image of Edessa, actually was the Shroud "doubled in four."
>I leave it to others to show the many difficulties with Wilson's arguments- at least two long critiques can be found on or via Dan's blog and ,as said before, one awaits his responses to what are fairly devastating critiques.
In this case "devastating" is only in the eye of the beholder!
And as I said, you will be waiting a long time if you think that Wilson even KNOWS, let alone CARES, about critiques of his `Image of Edessa was the Shroud of Turin doubled in four' theory on Dan's (or any-including my) blog.
Stephen E. Jones
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Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.
Interesting discussion! Thanks Stephen for all the info applied. I have made my point pretty clear on how I feel about Freeman's paper, and I agree 100% with your rebuttals and so I'll leave it at that. My comment here centers on the Mandylion painting in the Sakli Church. Personally I feel this painting or the artist that painted it was aware that the Mandylion was actually the folded Shroud, folded double in four i.e; "tetradiplon". The clues are the circles, seven of them and the ends of the Mandylion seeming to have several layers (lines). Do the seven circles mean seven layers below the face layer? Do the multiple lines painted at the edges depict multiple layers? I put this question to Mr. Guscin in an email a while back and he basically told me the circles meant nothing and were painted on many other renderings. I accept his thoughts but in viewing the Sakli image and others painted there, I noticed no dark circles on the others, white circles yes and on the Sakli Mandylion there is remnants of white circles that appear to have been erased and replaced by the dark 7 circles. Did the artist change his mind on how to depict seven layers below the top layer? Personally I think this painting needs more study by the experts and I believe it is a clue left by an unknown artist depicting his knowledge that the Mandylion was actually a much larger cloth and folded. I am no expert by any means but these details just struck me as peculiar. I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this Stephen.
Thanks,
F3
Flagrum3
>Interesting discussion! Thanks Stephen for all the info applied.
My pleasure.
>I have made my point pretty clear on how I feel about Freeman's paper, and I agree 100% with your rebuttals and so I'll leave it at that.
Thanks. I may do a separate post critiquing Freeman's paper.
>My comment here centers on the Mandylion painting in the Sakli Church. Personally I feel this painting or the artist that painted it was aware that the Mandylion was actually the folded Shroud, folded double in four i.e; "tetradiplon".
I don't think there is enough evidence to support that conclusion. But I do think it is very good evidence that the Image of Edessa was rectangular with Jesus' face in landscape mode (which may be, with the Shroud and its copies, unique in all of art for a single face portrait). And therefore that it was the top fourth of an initial doubling of the Shroud between the front and back head image.
Wilson points out that the Sakli fresco is: 1) an "Edessa cloth copy"; 2) it is "painted above an arch" (and elsewhere Wilson suggests that this symbolises its hiding and rediscovery in 525 bricked up inside an arch over a gate in Edessa; 3) the Sakli church is " halfway between ... Edessa and ... Constantinople"; 4) the fresco dates from the tenth or early eleventh century (i.e. 900s-early 1000s) and being a copy, it was probably while the Edessa Cloth was in Edessa before it was taken to Constantinople in 944; 5) it has "the same sepia-coloured, disembodied, rigidly frontal face on the same landscape cloth":
"One particularly interesting Edessa cloth copy... was discovered only a few years ago ... This is painted above an arch in the Sakli or `Hidden' church in the Goreme region of central Turkey, roughly halfway between Urfa/Edessa and Istanbul/Constantinople. It dates to the tenth or early eleventh century and, despite some damage to the face, its general resemblance to the facial portion on the Shroud is really quite remarkable. There is the same sepia-coloured, disembodied, rigidly frontal face on the same landscape cloth. (If we isolate the Shroud's facial area, then its sides are indeed wide in relation to the face ...). And when we know, as we do from the Official History, that this same Edessa cloth's imprint had the appearance of `a moist secretion without colouring or painter's art', then can we really believe that this could not have been our Shroud?" (Wilson, I., "The Blood and the Shroud," 1998, p.151).
>The clues are the circles, seven of them and the ends of the Mandylion seeming to have several layers (lines). Do the seven circles mean seven layers below the face layer? Do the multiple lines painted at the edges depict multiple layers?
Sorry, but I regard this as over-interpretation.
>I put this question to Mr. Guscin in an email a while back and he basically told me the circles meant nothing and were painted on many other renderings.
You might have misunderstood his "meant nothing" because as Editor of the BSTS Newsletter, Mark would be aware of Ian Wilson's article "Nicholas of Verdun: Scene of the Entombment, from the Verdun Altar," in BSTS Newsletter No. 67 of June 2008, in which Wilson points out that a row of three circles appears often in depictions of Jesus' entombment and that both these and the three "portholes" ordered by Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennitus (905-959) for the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem may have been based on three portholes in a pre-Mandylion container of the Shroud through which it suffered its `poker holes' trial by fire (by Caliph Mu'awiyah c.680):
[continued]
[continued]
"All of which inevitably raises the question of just how much of a coincidence can it be that sometime before 1192 – as evident from the Pray manuscript - the Shroud sustained burn damage specifically in the form of holes in a row of three? Historically, could there have been some kind of connection with the Holy Sepulchre's three port-holes? Might the Shroud's container perhaps similarly have had three portholes, the burn damage being inflicted through these? Or might Constantine have ordered the porthole design for the Sepulchre because he knew that burn damage in this form already existed on the Shroud? Is there some other explanation I have yet to think of? Or should we dismiss it completely as pure coincidence, and nothing more?"
>I accept his thoughts but in viewing the Sakli image and others painted there, I noticed no dark circles on the others, white circles yes and on the Sakli Mandylion there is remnants of white circles that appear to have been erased and replaced by the dark 7 circles.
I too consider the three and four holes on the Sakli Mandylion to be a depiction of what was on the Edessa Cloth, which in turn was a representation of the `poker holes' burn holes on the Shroud, also depicted on the Pray Manuscript.
>Did the artist change his mind on how to depict seven layers below the top layer? Personally I think this painting needs more study by the experts and I believe it is a clue left by an unknown artist depicting his knowledge that the Mandylion was actually a much larger cloth and folded. I am no expert by any means but these details just struck me as peculiar. I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this Stephen.
See above on your seven holes = seven layers theory. I prefer Wilson's theory that this pattern of three and four circles on the Sakli copy of the Mandylion, are based ultimately on the `poker holes' burn holes on the Shroud.
PS: Here is another depiction of the Edessa Cloth, being the "Alaverdi Gospel, manuscript made and illustrated at the Georgian scriptorium of Kalipos monastery on the Black Mountain, near Antioch before 1055" (Nino Kavtaria, "The 11th century Illustrations of Mandylion and Abgar's cycle from Georgian Manuscript A-484 in the context of the Byzantine Book Art," 20.04.2006). This and the Sakli church fresco and other Mandylion copies with photos is discussed in Wilson' "The Shroud," 2010, pp.180-184, plates. 22a-24c.
Stephen E. Jones
Interesting thoughts on the 7 circles (3 on one side, 4 on the other). When viewing the Shroud closely, it is clear that the 4 L shaped poker holes are mirrored on either side of the image,but on one side the 4th hole is minimal (presumably this was the result of the burning object or substance dissipating by the time it reached that side of the cloth).
To the naked eye, it would therefore appear as if there are 3 holes and 4 holes.
Before I am convinced by this, I'd like to investigate other depictions of Jesus at this time, as the circles might be a common decorative motif, although gut feeling is this is unlikely.
Further thoughts on the discussion of the Image of Edessa. Earlier in this discussion we talked about St Aloysious, and records indicating that he saw the image in the early 400s in Edessa where he was based. I was reading an account of Christianity through the ages last night and it made it clear that Christianity was very much a repressed religion until the early 300s, when the Emperor Constantine endorsed it. This can easily explain why there are no records of the image / shroud for the first few hundred years after Christ's earthly life ended. It is quite likely that it was kept secret.
Then there is only a gap of about 100 years, from when Christianity came out from the underground through Constantine ,to evidence of the image / shroud in Edessa in the early 400s. The 100 year gap is insignificant in the scheme of things!
Anonymous
>Flagrum 3. Who is actually going to take Freeman's paper on, yourself, Stephen or Wilson himself? I assume most people have read it by now but it would be good to have some more specific feedback than we have here.
Flagrum 3
>It is not my place here to "Take-On" Freeman's paper. I'll leave that up to Stephen, if he wishes.
As I said in a previous comment, I may critique Freeman's paper, "The Shroud of Turin and the Image of Edessa: A Misguided Journey," May 24, 2012, in a separate post.
>I wouldn't bother wasting my time taking on such irresponsible writings.
Agreed that Freeman's paper, from what little I have read of it, i.e. his attempted explaining away of tetradiplon (Gk. "four-doubled") of the Image of Edessa as being a 4 x 4 foot cloth, with 1 foot of each edge folded under, is "irresponsible."
But maybe someone in the Shroud pro-authenticity community has to do it. A Google search does not reveal that anyone from the Shroud pro-authenticity side has. But it is early days yet as Freeman's paper was apparently only published on May 24 this year.
But I would go further than just calling that part of Freeman's paper that I have read, "irresponsible." I claim that it is both WRONG and DISHONEST.
It is WRONG because: 1) the image of Edessa is almost always depicted as a RECTANGLE not a SQUARE; and 2) folding a cloth the way Freeman proposes does not double the WHOLE cloth, but only 3/4 of it, with the four corners QUADRUPLED and the centre 1/4 of it NOT DOUBLED at all.
It is DISHONEST because (as "a historian specializing in the history of ancient Greece and Rome" and who has read Wilson's latest book "The Shroud") Freeman deliberately withholds from his readers: 3) Wilson's evidence (p.140) that if the Shroud is first doubled between the front and back head images, and then doubled again four times, keeping the front head (face) face image uppermost, the result is A RECTANGLE with JESUS' HEAD CENTRED IN LANDSCAPE MODE (possibly unique in all of art for a portrait of a single face).
Anyone can verify 3) above for themselves by: a) printing out a copy of the Shroud (ensuring that one's printer does not shrink to fit' and thus distort it); b) cutting out the full-length Shroud image from the printout; c) folding the Shroud image double between the front and back head image; d) then keeping the front head (face) image uppermost, double the Shroud image copy again four times; and e) then one holds in one's hand a copy of the Image of Edessa, as can be verified by checking out online copies of it, e.g. at St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai or at the Sakli Church, Turkey!
>Sorry Stephen for hi-jacking here.
Apology unnecessary. Anonymous' question was to you.
Stephen E. Jones
Further to my comment at 10.25.
The 1516 copy backs up my point. In that copy, the frontal image shows three holes on one side of the image, and four on the other.
Just theorising here, but maybe the Sakli image, as a later image of the Image of Edessa, shows the poker holes where earlier depictions don't, because the poker holes were created some time between the earlier depictions and the Sakli depiction?
personally I think the unique use of the word "tetradiplon" is one of the most compelling factors in support of authenticity
>I may do a separate post critiquing Freeman's paper.
See "My critique of Charles Freeman's `The Turin Shroud and the Image of Edessa: A Misguided Journey,' part 1: Introduction."
Further comments about Freeman's paper should be made under that post.
Stephen E. Jones
Matt
>I went to the University of Adelaide this morning
And here I was thinking you were a German, living in Germany! But you are a fellow Antipodean. Albeit a Croweater and not a Sandgroper like me!
>to view a wonderful book in two volumes "Iconography of Christian Art" by G. Schiller. Highly recommended.
I will bear this in mind. With my 3000+ books my wife has a rule: get one book - get rid of one book. But so far the second part is only PROMISE to get rid of one book!
>The books had numerous plates with a huge selection of artistic representations of Jesus. There were at least 15 images of Jesus portrayed by German artists from the early to mid 1400s, the movement that I referred to earlier where Jesus's physical suffering was much more vividly portrayed, with body wide wounds including scourging.
It would be great if you could discover your own version of the Vignon markings in them.
>This impressive and authoritative work also confirms that it was not until this German movement that depictions of Jesus showed this widespread suffering.
OK. The book (and another) is available in the WA State Reference Library:
-----------------------------------------------
Christian iconography, or, The history of Christian art in the Middle Ages
Didron, Adolphe Napoleon, 1806-1867.
London, 1886-1891.
Iconography of Christian art
Schiller, Gertrud.
London : Lund Humphries, 1972.
-----------------------------------------------
I will go into Perth and check them out, and comment here what I think about them.
>Schiller discussed Byzantine art, noting in its earlier form it showed Jesus risen and glorified, never suffering. Then around the 9th / 10th century, this evolved so that Jesus's suffering was shown, but in a very subtle way, with wounds usually confined to the discrete and "polite" hand piercings, side wound etc.
Maybe as the Byzantine influence waned with the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, a more native realism began to assert itself?
>Conclusion: there is a total absence of artistic representations showing Jesus's widespread and severe body wounds until the early / mid 1400s. The theory that the shroud was created during the period of the carbon dating - a period when Jesus' suffering was still shown in very subtle ways - makes absolutely no sense from an art history perspective.
An important finding. Thanks.
>Similarly, it makes no sense that the Shroud was created by an artist in much earlier times. From an art history perspective, the only period in which it would make sense for the Shroud to be created by human hands was from the early / mid 1400s to early 1500s. However as reference to the Shroud is made in historical records in the mid 1300s, it could not have possibly been created in this period.
There is always the hypothetical possibility that the Shroud was created in the 3rd-5th century by a now unknown process as Drews argued. That, or de Wesselow's theory that the Shroud is Jesus' but He wasn't resurrected, are probably the last refuges of the Shroud sceptics.
>This art history context, I believe, provides compelling evidence for the Shroud's authenticity.
Agreed. Then if the only sceptical alternatives left are Drews or de Wesselow's scepticism will be as near to defeated as we could hope for.
Stephen E. Jones
Matt
>Just another thought.
Surely, if the Shroud was a medieval fake, the genius faker would not only have shown a blood wound on one hand, rather than the wrist, but the other?
Agreed. Two nail wounds would always be better than one for a forger's milking money from gullible 14th century pilgrims.
Especially as Jn 20:25-27 says "mark of the nails" in Jesus' "hands" (pural):
"25 So the other disciples told him, `We have seen the Lord.' But he said to them, `Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.' 26 Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, `Peace be with you.' 27 Then he said to Thomas, `Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.'"
>It is simply not coherent to think that a genius artist would have shown a blood wound on one wrist / hand rather than two, when basically every piece of art EVER shows wounds on both hands (or no wounds).
Agreed. ONE nail mark in one WRIST, not "hand." The Greek cheira can mean any part of the arm, but even if this genius forger was also an expert in New Testament Greek, the 14th century public he was trying to impress with his forgey wouldn't.
>In my humble opinion, this is another very strong factor in support of authenticity.
Agreed. But how many times do we have to keep `flogging the dead horse' (or `slaying the already slain') of the Shroud sceptics' medieval forger theory!
Stephen E. Jones
Matt
>It is interesting to view the 1516 copy, the copyist significantly showed the shroud with wounds clearly visible on BOTH hands, unlike the original which only shows a wound on one wrist.
Another good point (I checked Dan Porter's "1516 Copy of the Shroud Attributed to Albrecht Durer or Bernard van Orley").
>This reinforces the ODDNESS (if the real Shroud is a fake) of hand wounds not shown on BOTH hands.
Agreed.
>The fact is, the shroud is authentic, the wound on one wrist is covered by the other hand organically and without artifice.
Agreed. It may be significant that in the Pray Manuscript (Berkowitz, plate III), the artist avoids the problem by showing no nail wounds in either of Jesus' hands, where the wounds would be clearly seen.
However, in plate IV (see my "My critique of "The Pray Codex," Wikipedia, 1 May 2011" for both plates), the artist shows a nail wound in each hand. In the left hand, which on the Shroud the nail wound is not visible, being covered by the right hand, PM's artist has shown the nail in the palm, as it is traditionally depicted.
But in the right hand, which on the Shroud the nail wound is visible at the base of the hand, near the wrist, the PM's artist has depicted the nail wound exactly as it is on the Shroud: at the base of the hand, near the wrist!
>An artist could (and WOULD if he was seeking to create a credible and believable relic consistent with the Bible)have gone to pains to reveal wounds on BOTH hands, like the copyist of 1516 does.
Agreed. See my previous comment.
>It's also worth reinforcing the prominence the 1516 copyist has given to the poker holes. Some anti-authenticitists have questioned why the Pray Manuscript artist would have portrayed the "inconsequential" poker holes.
From memory that was our `friend' the `gnat strainer and camel swallower' (Mt 23:24). No names-no pack drill!
>Well, before the later fires, the poker holes were clearly a prominent feature.
Wilson theorises they go back to "Caliph Mu'awiyah's 'trial by fire' experiment back around 680." (Wilson, I., "The Shroud," 2010, p.184).
>This adds credibility to why the Pray Manuscript artist might have represented them.
Agreed. He could have left the `poker holes' out, since up close they are clearly ugly burn marks. But thankfully he didn't, because they are proof beyond reasonable doubt that the PM was copied from the Shroud before 1192-95.
The One whose image it is on the Shroud made sure that the PM artist didn't leave them out! So that the Shroud sceptics (i.e. true believers in the inauthenticity of the Shroud) will be without excuse:
"There is enough light to enlighten the elect and enough obscurity to humiliate them. There is enough obscurity to blind the reprobate and enough light to condemn them and deprive them of excuse." (Pascal, "Pensées," 236).
when they stand before Him to give an account of every deed they have ever done (Mt 16:27; 2Cor 5:10; Acts 10:41-42; Rev 20:12, Rev 22:12):
Stephen E. Jones
Matt
>Interesting thoughts on the 7 circles (3 on one side, 4 on the other). When viewing the Shroud closely, it is clear that the 4 L shaped poker holes are mirrored on either side of the image,but on one side the 4th hole is minimal (presumably this was the result of the burning object or substance dissipating by the time it reached that side of the cloth).
Yes. Here is a yet unpublished explanation by Ian Wilson of the pattern of `poker hole' burns, that they are "in descending order of penetration":
"The answer to Michael Clift's third observation is that at the time the Shroud received the so-called poker-boles (the pre-1532 burns), the Shroud was folded differently to the 48 folds of 1532. The four sets of triple poker-holes match each other up in descending order of penetration, and if a Shroud photograph is folded so that each hole overlies the other it can be observed that the Shroud must have been folded only in four at the time this damage was sustained. Furthermore the holes occur at the dead centre of this arrangement, thus strongly suggesting that the damage was deliberate, as from `trial by fire.'" (Ian Wilson, "The British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, No. 10, April 1985, p.13).
>To the naked eye, it would therefore appear as if there are 3 holes and 4 holes.
Agreed.
>Before I am convinced by this, I'd like to investigate other depictions of Jesus at this time, as the circles might be a common decorative motif, although gut feeling is this is unlikely.
Even if circles are "a common decorative motif," those associated with the Should could all have come from copying the Shroud's pattern of `poker holes.'
>Further thoughts on the discussion of the Image of Edessa. Earlier in this discussion we talked about St Aloysious, and records indicating that he saw the image in the early 400s in Edessa where he was based.
Do you mean St. Aloysius? I would appreciate more info on this, with references.
>I was reading an account of Christianity through the ages last night and it made it clear that Christianity was very much a repressed religion until the early 300s, when the Emperor Constantine endorsed it.
Actually Constantine never actually "enforsed" Christianity. With the The Edict of Milan (313) Constantine granted freedom from persecution to all religions, including Christianity, which had been the most persecuted religion.
>This can easily easily explain why there are no records of the image / shroud for the first few hundred years after Christ's earthly life ended. It is quite likely that it was kept secret.
Agreed. There was little upside and much potential downside for the early church to publicly display the Shroud.
>Then there is only a gap of about 100 years, from when Christianity came out from the underground through Constantine ,to evidence of the image / shroud in Edessa in the early 400s. The 100 year gap is insignificant in the scheme of things!
Agreed.
I would like to now wind down these comments under this post.
Stephen E. Jones
Matt
I didn't realise that this your comment of 2 July hadn't been approved by me until today 8 July. My apologies!
>In the interests of fairness, I am always prepared to listen to alternative points of view.
Christian apologist C.S. Lewis pointed out that we can be too fair:
"We are so afraid of being led into unfairness ... that we are liable to overshoot the mark and treat him [an anti-Christian's views] too kindly." (Lewis, C.S., "Miracles," 1963, p.169).
The Bible warns Christians against helping anti-Christians spread their views by being too hospitable to them, because we can thereby unintentionally be part of their wicked works:
2John 1:10-11. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.
>I have been reading Colin Berry's theory on the Lirey Badge today. He gets top marks for originality, at least. I found the theory interesting, and was willing to give it a go.
I don't read Colin's blog but I did read a post on Dan's blog ("The Cluny Medal with shields of Geoffrey de Charny and Jeanne de Vergy") in which Dan mentioned that "Colin Berry should re-evaluate his historical hypothesis based on the lead medal in the Cluny museum in Paris."
>Now let's just assume for the moment that MAYBE the Pray Manuscript image wasn't influenced by a viewing of the Shroud, and the other strands of pre-13th century evidence didn't exist.
I don't follow you here. What has the 1192-95 Pray Manuscript have to do with the c.1355 Cluny medallion?
>Would his theory then have any credibility?
Not until it plausibly explained away the "at least twelve (12) unique features shared between the PM and the Shroud" as listed in my post, "My critique of `The Pray Codex,' Wikipedia, 1 May 2011":
-----------------------------------
1. Jesus is naked (uniquely in the medieval era);
2. His hands are crossed over His pelvis;
3. Jesus' right hand is over His left;
4. there is a nail bloodstain in His right wrist (Plate IV);
5. no thumbs are visible;
6. Jesus' fingers are very long;
7. there is a mark above Jesus' right eye corresponding to the reversed `3' bloodstain on the Shroud of Turin;
8. the Shroud is more than double the body's length;
9. the Shroud has a herringbone weave pattern;
10. the Shroud has an L-shaped pattern of four `poker holes';
11. and another pattern of five `poker holes';
12. the end of the PM's shroud below Jesus' feet (upper scene) has a ragged edge which corresponds with (i.e. does not perfectly match) the Shroud of Turin's, with the latter's missing corner not yet removed.
-----------------------------------
>>For me, some key problems with his theory include:
I assume from what follows you are now back to "Colin Berry's theory on the Lirey Badge".
>- He assumes that the persona on the badge is not Jesus, but The Knight Templar. Reasons for this includes the fact that he does not consider the figure to be Christ like (lack of beard etc), and that the figure has the following characteristics that make him think it was the Knight templar being burnt at the stake:
Which "Knight Templar"? I assume he means either Templar grandmaster Jacques de Molay (c. 1244-1314) or Geoffroi de Charny (c. 1258–1314) who was burned at the stake with de Molay in 1314.
The latter is not to be confused with his nephew, the French knight Geoffrey de Charny (c.1300-1356), who first exhibited the Shroud in Lirey, France in c.1355.
[continued]
[continued]
>- Raw bone exposed knees
This is over-interpretation. The Lirey medallion was made of cast lead, so the knobbly knees and other parts of the body are probably a result of the casting process-i.e. heavy lead weighing down on the deeper parts of the mold.
- items below the feet reminiscent of flames
There are no "items below the feet reminiscent of flames." They appear to be just floral decorative elements.
Since de Molay and de Charny had been burnt at the stake, there would be no body worth depicting-he would have become a blackened, indistinct mass.
>- on the rear image of the figure a chain running along the bottom of the back and just to the right and left sides of the figure: victims of burning at the stake were chained to the stake
There is no chain. Just decorative elements.
>now some thoughts of mine on this:
>
>- It is impossible to tell at such a small scale whether or not the figure has a beard or not
Agreed. The medallion is only about 2.4 inches (6.1 cm) across.
>- I don't think the raw knees are signs of a figure being burnt at the stake, rather just the product of an metal artist struggling with conveying a human figure at very small scale. The overall figure is not convincing at all
Agreed.
>- the objects below the feet flames?: maybe
No.
>- the chain: maybe, but just as possibly the blood marks at the bottom of Jesus's back (and just to the right and left of his back, relating to the back of the forearms) on the Shroud.
There is no chain.
>Maybe, just maybe, the badge IS a double entendre on the Knight Templar and the Jesus of the Shroud.
This concedes that the medallion is a representation of the Shroud. Otherwise, why would the medallion depict two images, front and back, head-to-head, as the Shroud is?
And why would the medallion depict the coat of arms of both the de Charny and the Vergy families, as Dan pointed out:
"Given that the medal has the two shields of Geoffrey de Charny of Lirey and Jeanne de Vergy of Besançon, it is most unlikely that the medal was struck before the two were married in 1349 or after Geoffrey’s death in 1356."
But then why bring "the Knight Templar" (de Molay or de Charny) into it at all? They died ~40 years before the Shroud was exhibited at Lirey c.1355.
>But that doesn't invalidate arguments as to the Shroud's authenticity. This may have simply been a play on the Shroud which they managed to have in their possession.
See above, if the medallion depicted the Shroud (since it bore the coat of arms of Shroud owners Geoffrey de Charny and his wife Jeanne de Vergy; and its two images are front and back, head to head, as the Shroud is), then "the Knight Templar" is an unnecessary complication. Geoffrey de Charny (c. 1300-1356) was not a direct descendant of Geoffroi de Charny (c. 1258-1314).
[continued]
[continued]
>He goes on to theorize that there was a "Mark 1" version of the Shroud, which was an image of the Knight Templar produced from a hot bas relief. He then goes on to theorize that a "Mark 2" was created, which is the Shroud of Turin. This was then exhibited publicly, which was a lucrative exercise, attracting paying viewers.
This is similar to Picknett and Prince's `Leonardo did it' theory in which there was an inferior Mk I version, which was conveniently destroyed and replaced by Leonardo's improved Mk II version.
Without any evidence to constrain him Colin, like Picknett and Prince, can claim whatever he likes. He is in my opinion just an attention-seeker, who has discovered the Shroud as a way to attack Christianity and boost his ego. His claims are essentially vacuous and not worth wasting time on.
>Key questions remain:
>
>- how could such a convincing image be created? It's one thing to make a linen scorch from an ethnic mask as Colin does, another to create the Shroud in all its complexity!!!
Agreed.
>- The metal worker who made the badge didn't do a very convincing version of a human figure, albeit it was at a small scale. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence that a full scale anatomically correct statue would be created from the same circle of people
Good point.
>- If the Shroud was created for public viewing, then it seems curious that the artist did not create the artwork to show wounds in both palms of the hands, consistent with all other art works in history (other than art that shows no wounds on the hands). The Shroud has a wound only on one hand, and that is near the wrist area, hardly consistent with essentially universal representations of wounds in the centre of the palms
Agreed. The Cluny medallion could have been made to look more like the Shroud if the same forger made both.
>- There's other questions..... why wasn't Jesus's modesty protected with the usual clothes around the mid region,
Yes. As the Drews quote I posted, any forger who in the 14th century gratuitously depicted Jesus naked front and back (in some ways the rear view is even more shocking than the front) would have been burned at the stake.
>why was such severe body wide infliction shown in the image when the art of the time universally showed only polite and discrete wounds in the hands, side and feet (maybe the head if you are lucky)- it wasn't till the early-mid 1400s that German artists began to show Christ's severe body wide inflictions
It is also a good reason why the full-length Shroud was not depicted until the 12th century Pray Manuscript.
>Thoughts?
See above. I have said before that I don't like giving Colin an ongoing proxy presence here on my blog as he has been banned.
And also, as stated I am trying to wind down comments under this Lombatti post so I can spend more time on my new Charles Freeman series.
Stephen E. Jones
As the term tetradiplon is being used so often in the discussion can it perhaps be explained.
The only reference I can find from those using it, perhaps I can be given some more, is the Acts of the Holy Apostle Thaddeus but there the word seems to be used of the cloth that was given to Christ to wipe his face on. In other words, it was already four times folded before his face was wiped on it.
Later in the text there is a mention of his burial clothes being left in the tomb. Presumably if the cloth is the same as the Turin Shroud there is some other document that makes the link to these burial clothes.
Frank B
>As the term tetradiplon is being used so often in the discussion can it perhaps be explained.
The only reference I can find from those using it, perhaps I can be given some more, is the Acts of the Holy Apostle Thaddeus but there the word seems to be used of the cloth that was given to Christ to wipe his face on. In other words, it was already four times folded before his face was wiped on it.
No one is claiming that the sixth century apocryphal Acts of the Holy Apostle Thaddeus is necessarily otherwise accurate.
Wilson's point are: 1) that it uniquely in the whole of known ancient Greek literature uses the word tetradiplon ("four-doubled") of the Image of Edessa; 2) it describes the image as of "a watery origination," and 3) it further describes the cloth the Image is on as a "sindon" (a large linen sheet):
"In the Story of the Image of Edessa, the Image is specifically described as mounted on a board. So a folding for presentation purposes in this 'doubled in four' way actually makes a great deal of sense. It reduces the Shroud's extremely awkward fourteen-foot length into a manageable and presentable twenty-one inches by forty-five inches, and displays by far the most meaningful section of the cloth, the face. And if we think of the face as seen in this way in the dim lighting conditions of a church interior ... the different colour of the bloodstains does not show up - it is easy to understand how the face might have been supposed to be of a watery origination, exactly as envisaged in the sixth-century Acts of Thaddaeus account. Moreover, not only does this document use the word tetradiplon, thereby indicating the Image of Edessa to have been on a large cloth, in the very next sentence it also uses the word sindon for the Image ... This is not to suggest that the Image of Edessa had necessarily yet been recognized as Jesus's burial shroud; it may well not yet have been unfastened from its 'doubled in four mounting'. For our present purposes the documentary confirmation that the Image of Edessa was a large cloth, and not the hand-towel size often envisaged, is enough." (Wilson, I., "The Shroud," 2010, pp.140-141).
>Later in the text there is a mention of his burial clothes being left in the tomb. Presumably if the cloth is the same as the Turin Shroud there is some other document that makes the link to these burial clothes.
See above on "sindon", the same word used in the Gospels for Jesus' burial sheet.
Stephen E. Jones.
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