Sidestrip #5: The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is Jesus' burial sheet!

SIDESTRIP #5
Copyright © Stephen E. Jones[1]

This is "Sidestrip," part #5 of my series, "The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is Jesus' burial sheet!"

[Main index] [Previous: Weave #4] [Next: Selvedge #6]

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1. A linen cloth #2
4. Sidestrip

Sidestrip. The sidestrip is a strip of linen about 8 cms (3½ inches) wide along its left-hand side of the Shroud (looking at it with its frontal image in the lower half and the man upright), and joined by a single seam[2]. The strip is incomplete at each end, with 14 cms (5½ inches) and 36 cms (14 inches) missing at the bottom and top left hand corners respectively[3]. The sidestrip is made from the same piece of cloth as the Shroud, since unique irregularities in the weave of the main body of the Shroud extend across the side strip[4].

[Right (enlarge): The sidestrip can be seen running the entire left hand side of the Shroud, except for missing pieces at each end[5].]

Seam. The sidestrip is joined to the main body of the Shroud by a single seam[6] which is 4-5 mm wide[7]. The sewing thread of the seam is also linen[8]. In preparing the Shroud for its 1998 exposition, ancient textiles conservator, Dr. Mechthild Flury-Lemberg (1929-), removed the blue satin surround[9] that had been sewed on by Princess Clotilde of Savoy (1843–1911) in 1868[10]. Flury-Lemberg was the first person since the 16th century to see between the underside of the Shroud and its linen backing cloth sewed on in 1534 by Chambéry's Poor Clare nuns after the 1532 fire[11]. In 2000 Flury-Lemberg reported that she had discovered,

[Left (enlarge): Seam joining the sidestrip (left) and the main body of the Shroud (right), near its left hand corner[12].]

"a very special, almost invisible stitching with which the edges were finished" which is visible only on the Shroud's under-side[13]. In her forty years of working on historic textiles Flury-Lemberg had only once before found an "essentially

[Right: enlarge: Drawing of `invisible seam' found on cloth fragments at the first-century Jewish fortress of Masada[14], which is "identical to that found on the Shroud and nowhere else"[15].]

identical" type of stitching: that found in first-century textiles at Masada, the Jewish fortress overrun by the Romans in AD 73[16] and never occupied again[17].

Problem for the forgery theory. That the Shroud has almost invisible stitching in its seam that is identical to stitching found elsewhere only at the Jewish fortress of Masada, which was last occupied in AD 73, is yet another (see #1, #3 and #4) problem for the forgery theory. Since a medieval forger would be most unlikely (to put it mildly) to even know about almost invisible first century Jewish stitching; and even if he did know about it, he would be even more unlikely to go to the trouble of adding it to his forgery (what use would almost invisible stitching be to a forger?); and even if he wanted to use it, he would be most unlikely to have the high degree of skill needed to do such stitching.

So again the forgery theory would need to resort to the pre-1988 fall-back position of the late leading anti-authenticist Walter McCrone (1916-2002), that "a first century cloth could have been found and used by a 14th century artist to paint the image":

"A carbon-dating test would be final if it led to a date significantly later than the early first century. A first century date, on the other hand, would remove almost all obstacles to universal acceptance of the `Shroud' as authentic. Only the careful objective scientist might still point out that a first century cloth could have been found and used by a 14th century artist to paint the image"[18].

But, leaving aside whether that would be "objective," for anti- authenticists to claim that a medieval forger forged the Shroud's image on a 1st century cloth would, as we saw in parts #3 and #4, be admitting that the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud claim was wrong in its claim that:

"... the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval ... AD 1260-1390 ..."[19].

Continued in part #6, "Selvedge."

Notes
1. This post is copyright. Permission is granted to quote from any part of this post (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this post. [return]
2. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, p.21; Schwalbe, L.A. & Rogers, R.N., 1982, "Physics and Chemistry of the Shroud of Turin: Summary of the 1978 Investigation," Analytica Chimica Acta, Vol. 135, No. 1, p.41; Adler, A.D., 1998, "Concerning the Side Strip on the Shroud of Turin," in Adler, A.D. & Crispino, D., ed., "The Orphaned Manuscript: A Gathering of Publications on the Shroud of Turin," Effatà Editrice: Cantalupa, Italy, 2002, pp.87-91, 87; de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London, p.109. [return]
3. Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: Malta, p.162. [return]
4. Schwalbe & Rogers, 1982, p.42. [return]
5. "Shroud of Turin," Wikipedia, 17 August 2015. [return]
6. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, p.21. [return]
7. Schwalbe & Rogers, 1982, p.41. [return]
8. Wilson, 1979, p.70. [return]
9. Wilson, I., 2000, "`The Turin Shroud - past, present and future', Turin, 2-5 March, 2000 - probably the best-ever Shroud Symposium," British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, No. 51, June. [return]
10. Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, p.189. [return]
11. Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, p.22. [return]
12. Extract from Latendresse, M., 2010, "Shroud Scope: Durante 2002: Vertical," Sindonology.org. [return]
13. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.22. [return]
14. Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London, p.74. [return]
15. de Wesselow, 2012, p.109. My emphasis. [return]
16. Wilson, 2010, pp.71-74. My emphasis. [return]
17. Wilson, 2000, ibid. [return]
18. McCrone, W.C., 1999, "Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin," Prometheus Books: Amherst NY, p.141. [return]
19. Damon, P.E., et al., 1989, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," Nature, Vol. 337, 16th February, pp.611-615, p.611. [return]

Posted 24 August 2015. Updated 18 July 2024.