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]
- A linen cloth #2
- Sidestrip
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.
Posts
11 comments:
Anonymous
>Greetings! I found the following post by "Hugh Farey" over at Dan's blog regarding this blog entry and thought you might like to address it: ...
No. As I stated as recently as 20 August 2015, posting comments on my blog for the purpose of providing discussion on Porter's blog is off-topic:
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You may not be aware that since November 4, 2014 it has been my policy that:
"... mentioning of Dan Porter, and his blog, and his blog's members in connection with Porter's blog, is henceforth off-topic on my blog."
I further advised of this policy in my comments of: November 14, 2014; November 16, 2014; and May 31, 2015
My reason is given in my November 16 comment that I don't want to provide `grist for the mill' of Porter's blog:
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"As I have stated ... it is my policy ... that: `... mentioning of Dan Porter, and his blog, and his blog's members in connection with Porter's blog, is henceforth off-topic on my blog.' ... This includes you [Porter] , or your members, making comments on my blog for the purpose of providing `grist for the mill' of your blog.
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Which in turn is based on my objection stated in my post, of May 8, 2014: "`The Letter from Alexius Comnenus': My response to Dan Porter," that "Porter is a pirate who steals the hard work and intellectual property of others" including me:
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"Again Porter has scavenged my work, rather than do original work of his own. As I have said before, ... Porter is a pirate who steals the hard work and intellectual property of others ... But Porter is evidently untroubled by the ethics of parasiting off the work of others, despite it being against their expressed wishes, to feed his `gossip column' blog."
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My policy above is aimed at preventing Porter and his readers from starting a comments debate on my blog and then cross-posting it to Porter's blog, to provide `grist for its mill'.
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Except to say that Farey, a mere science teacher, contradicts ancient textiles conservator Mechthilde Flury-Lemberg's statement that the stitching of the seam joining the sidestrip and the main body of the Shroud is closely similar, if not identical, to that found at Masada.
As Farey himself stated according to you:
"As it happens, I don't agree with some of Flury Lemberg's interpretations."
So if anyone choose to believe Farey over against Flury-Lemberg that's THEIR problem.
Here are the sources I based the Masada part of my "Sidestrip" entry above on.
First was Ian Wilson's eye-witness report of what Flury-Lemberg said at the 2000 Turin Symposium (my emphases):
"The first speaker was Dr. Mechthild Flury-Lemberg ... But even more importantly, Dr. Flury-Lemberg found the cloth's finishing, at its hems, and in the joining seam to have been done using an unusual type of stitching very nearly invisible on one side, and as such CLOSELY RESEMBLING THAT OF ANCIENT JEWISH TEXTILES AS FOUND AT MASADA, THE JEWISH PALACE-FORTRESS THAT WAS OVERTHROWN BY THE ROMANS IN AD 73, NEVER TO BE OCCUPIED AGAIN. This alone, therefore, constitutes powerful evidence against the carbon dating result of 1988. As Dr. Flury-Lemberg told the Sunday Times 'In my opinion the Shroud is not a mediaeval fake. The parallels I have found indicate that it could have existed at the same time as Jesus Christ and in what is now Israel.'" (Wilson, I., 2000, "`The Turin Shroud – past, present and future', Turin, 2-5 March, 2000 – probably the best-ever Shroud Symposium," BSTS Newsletter, No. 51, June).
[continued]
[continued]
And also what Wilson subsequently wrote about it:
"Another of Dr Flury-Lemberg's findings, discovered only shortly before the commencement of the March 2000 Symposium, is what she calls `a very special, almost invisible stitching with which the edges were finished', done so cleverly that it is visible only on the Shroud's reverse, or under-side. This CLOSELY RESEMBLES SIMILAR ALMOST INVISIBLE STITCHING ON FIRST-CENTURY AD TEXTILE FRAGMENTS FOUND IN TOMBS IN THE ENVIRONS OF THE ANCIENT JEWISH PALACE-FORTRESS MASADA." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," p.41).
"Just as interesting are Dr Flury-Lemberg's observations concerning the beautifully crafted seam by which the raw edges were joined up. ... She found the seam to have some HIGHLY UNUSUAL TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS THAT IN FOUR DECADES OF WORKING ON HISTORIC TEXTILES SHE HAD COME ACROSS ONLY ONCE BEFORE, ON FIRST-CENTURY TEXTILES FOUND AT MASADA, the historic Dead Sea fortress where over nine hundred Jewish rebels who lived just one generation later than Jesus made a famous last stand against the Romans at the end of the Jewish Revolt, in AD 72-3. When the site was excavated by the famous Israeli commander Yigael Yadin back in the 1950s, substantial scraps of the defenders' clothing came to light, the dry air of the surrounding Judaean desert having preserved them well. In 1994 Yadin's successors at last published the technical report on these clothing scraps, and right there in that report is a technical drawing of what the excavators adjudged to be A VERY UNUSUAL SEAM - ONE WHICH IN DR FLURY-LEMBERG'S OPINION IS ESSENTIALLY IDENTICAL to the one visible on the Turin Shroud ..." (Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," pp.73-74).
So if Farey, Porter, you, or anyone, think that Wilson and/or Flury-Lemberg are wrong about Masada, they/you should take it up with them.
Farey himself believes that the Shroud had "an accidental 14th century origin":
"Unlike my predecessors, whom I think are more or less committed to a pro-authenticity point of view, I myself currently incline more towards an accidental 14th century origin for the cloth now preserved in Turin." ("Editorial - by Hugh Farey," Newsletter No. 78 - December 2013).
Instead of Farey noticing the "speck" that is in Shroud pro-authenticist's eyes, why doesn't he, if he claims to be a Christian, obey Jesus and "first take the log out of your own eye":
Mt 7:3-5 "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, `Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye."
For starters, Farey is the anti-authenticist Editor of the BSTS Newsletter. Why doesn't he present in the BSTS Newsletter a fully worked out and documented paper on his "accidental 14th century origin" of the Shroud theory?
Stephen E. Jones
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MY POLICIES Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. Except that comments under my latest post can be on any Shroud-related topic without being off-topic. I normally allow only one comment per individual under each one of my posts.
Thank you for your response. Btw I believe the shroud is genuine and nearly all the anti-authenticists (and even some of the supposed "pro-authenticists") at Dan's blog are the real fakes.
Anonymous
>Thank you for your response. Btw I believe the shroud is genuine
Great!
>and nearly all the anti-authenticists (and even some of the supposed "pro-authenticists") at Dan's blog are the real fakes.
I don't disagree. They are no doubt genuine IN THEIR OWN EYES. But: "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death." (Proverbs 14:12).
This is the end of my wasting time commenting under this post on Porter and his blog.
Stephen E. Jones
Hello Stephen,
The original German text of Flury-Lemberg’s article reads (on p. 24-25):
„Abb. 3a: Die Längsnaht des Tuches ist keine gewöhnliche Naht. Es wurde ein Nahttypus ausgewählt, der darauf angelegt ist, die Naht auf der Oberseite so unsichtbar wie nur möglich erscheinen zu lassen. Ein weiteres Argument für die Professionalität, mit der bei der Anfertigung des Grabtuches geplant und gearbeitet wurde. Die Naht wurde von der Rückseite genäht, und die sorgfältig ausgeführten Stiche sind auf der Oberseite kaum wahrnehmbar. Abb. 3b: Die Naht liegt hier unsichtbar flach, während sie auf der Rückseite Abb. 3c wie ein Wulst auf dem Stoff liegt. Abb. 3a: Auch für diese besondere Gestaltung der Längsnaht finden sich Vergleiche an Gewebefragmenten aus dem erwähnten Fund von Masada. [5] Abschliessend lässt sich darum sagen: die Leinwand des Turiner Grabtuches als solche weist weder webtechnische noch nähtechnische Merkmale auf, die gegen ihre Originalität als ein hochwertiges Produkt einer Manufaktur des 1. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. sprechen würden.“ (M. Flury-Lemberg, Die Leinwand des Turiner Grabtuches zum technischen Befund, in: Scannerini S, Savarino P, eds., The Turin Shroud - past, present and future - International Scientific Symposium, Effatà Edictrice, Turin, 2000. pp. 21-43)
The words “keine gewöhnliche Naht” mean ‘not an ordinary seam’. The words “diese besondere Gestaltung der Längsnaht” mean ‘this special design of the longitudinal seam’. These words were used here by Flury-Lemberg for the side seam of the Shroud. Apparently, these words were not translated well in Sindon, December 2001: ‘not an ordinary’ apparently became ‘no simple’ there, and ‘this special design’ became ‘this same kind’.
Kind regards, Adrie
Adrie
>The original German text of Flury-Lemberg’s article reads (on p. 24-25):
...(M. Flury-Lemberg, Die Leinwand des Turiner Grabtuches zum technischen Befund, in: Scannerini S, Savarino P, eds., The Turin Shroud - past, present and future - International Scientific Symposium, Effatà Edictrice, Turin, 2000. pp. 21-43)
Thanks. I had last night started to scan and Google translate Flury-Lemberg's German chapter in Scannerini & Savarino book, where I could recognise "Masada." I had hoped to do this to undercut Farey's interpretation of Flury-Lemberg's Sindon 2001, which I didn't post, because of my policy of not giving Farey a platform on my blog. At that stage I suspected the anonymous commenter could have been Farey. But it was not satisfactory - some German words Google could not translate and even some of those it could translate sounded strange. So I had abandoned the attempt.
>The words “keine gewöhnliche Naht” mean ‘not an ordinary seam’. The words “diese besondere Gestaltung der Längsnaht” mean ‘this special design of the longitudinal seam’. These words were used here by Flury-Lemberg for the side seam of the Shroud. Apparently, these words were not translated well in Sindon, December 2001: ‘not an ordinary’ apparently became ‘no simple’ there, and ‘this special design’ became ‘this same kind’.
Thanks again. Clearly Wilson who was there understood what Flury-Lemberg meant, either through him understanding German, her talk being translated in real time by an interpreter, and/or through clarifying it with Flury-Lemberg at the symposium.
Farey is clutching at straws to maintain his absurd, "accidental 14th century origin" of the Shroud theory.
>Kind regards, Adrie
Again thanks.
Stephen E. Jones
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Reader, if you like this my The Shroud of Turin blog, and you have a website, could you please consider adding a hyperlink to my blog on it? This would help increase its Google PageRank number and so enable those who are Google searching on "the Shroud of Turin" to more readily discover my blog. Thanks.
In Ray Downing's show on the History Channel, "The Real Face of Jesus", he posits that the side strip was used to wrap the Shroud around the body. Otherwise the arms would show up more relaxed on the Shroud instead of so close to the legs. The side strip is shown cut into three pieces to accomplish this purpose.
Steve
>In Ray Downing's show on the History Channel, "The Real Face of Jesus", he posits that the side strip was used to wrap the Shroud around the body.
From memory that was one of the earlier theories, when it was wrongly thought that the sidestrip and the main body of the Shroud had separate origins and the sidestrip was later sewn onto the main body of the Shroud to centre the face of the Mandylion.
But it has several things wrong with it:
1) The sidestrip and the Shroud were in fact cut from the same larger sheet of linen as the Shroud (see future installment of Selvedge #6 or "The Shroud of Turin: 2.1. A linen sheet").
2) The sidestrip runs the full 437 cm length of the Shroud, apart from two pieces at either end totalling 40 cms:
"A nearly 8 centimetre wide strip, incomplete at its extremities, forms part of the sheet on the topmost side. The missing pieces were 14 and 36 centimetres long. This side strip is made from the same twilled cloth of the Shroud, of which it originally formed part; in fact, the irregularities of the weave, clearly visible in the principal section, extend exactly to the side strip, as can be seen from the radiographies carried out in 1978 and published by Schwalbe and Rogers ..." (Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud," p.162).
It would be a HUGE waste to use such a valuable piece of linen as a ~4.4 m x 8 cm strip of herringbone 3:1 twill was back then, just for a binding strip, let alone one with a selvedge.
3) It would mean that the man's body would not have been centred on the main body of the Shroud (a HIGHLY UNLIKELY error of those who buried him), but when the sidestrip was later joined to the Shroud it coincidentally just happened to centre the body on the combined Shroud.
>Otherwise the arms would show up more relaxed on the Shroud instead of so close to the legs.
The Shroud man's arms are not "close to the legs" (see "Shroud Scope).
The arms of the Shroud man are, according to medical experts, in a state of broken rigor mortis and, like Lazarus whose "hands and feet [were] bound with linen strips" (John 11:44), were probably tied together at the wrists.
That man's body is also, according to medical experts, in a state of rigor mortis bent forward in the position it was on the cross (see "The Shroud of Turin World Mysteries.com: The Shroud of Turin"). Which means that his broken rigor mortis arms APPEAR to be further down his body than they would have been if he had been lying flat.
>The side strip is shown cut into three pieces to accomplish this purpose.
This is simply WRONG. The sidestrip is ONE UNBROKEN piece, running the full length of the Shroud, except for those two short pieces missing from its top and bottom.
Stephen E. Jones
Ray Downing also stated that there is no color on the Shroud. The latest digital images show dark auburn or chestnut colored hair. How is that possible?
Steve
>Ray Downing also stated that there is no color on the Shroud.
He presumably means there is no colour (e.g. paint, dye, pigment, ink, etc) ADDED to the Shroud which comprises its image. The colour of the Shroud image is a PHYSICAL CHANGE to those parts of the linen fibres that the image occurs on.
See my recent comment under my 2012 post, "`I heard the Shroud image was made by a bas-relief metal sculpture heated'".
STURP found in 1978 that "the body image is made up of yellowed surface fibrils of the linen that are at more advanced stages of degradation than the non-image linen. ... no evidence was found in the body image of any added substances [such as ink, paint, dye, etc] that could have contributed to the yellow colour of the fibrils that form the image:
"A recent volume of the American Chemical Society, ACS Advances in Chemistry no. 205, Archaeological Chemistry III, ed. Joseph B. Lambert, 1984, contains no less than four papers of considerable relevance to Shroud studies: E.J. Jumper, A.D. Adler, J.P. Jackson, S.F. Pellicori, J.H. Heller & J.R. Druzik `A Comprehensive Examination of the Various Stains and Images on the Shroud of Turin' This thirty page paper represents by far the best appraisal so far of STURP's 1978 testing, and is particularly valuable for its discussion of the Shroud's various stains and images. According to the abstract [p.447]: `The conclusions are that the body image is made up of yellowed surface fibrils of the linen that are at more advanced stages of degradation than the non-image linen. The chromophore is a conjugated carbonyl. No evidence was found in the body image of any added substances that could have contributed to the yellow colour of the fibrils that form the image. The blood images on the cloth are made of blood. The data, taken together, do not support the hypothesis that the images on the Shroud are due to an artist.'" (Wilson, I., 1984, "Some recent publications," British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, No. 8, October, p.7)
>The latest digital images show dark auburn or chestnut colored hair. How is that possible?
In the same comment, the colour of the Shroud image ranges "from straw-yellow to sepia ... depending on the prevailing light conditions":
"Yet another of the surprises arising from viewing the Shroud directly rather than via a photograph is discovering just how pale and subtle the two body imprints appear. First-hand assessments of their colouring range from straw-yellow to sepia, much depending on the prevailing light conditions." (Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," p.7).
[continued]
[continued]
The differences in image colour are due to DIFFERENT DENSITIES PER UNIT AREA of the SAME UNIFORM COLOUR:
"This uniformity of color of the body image fibers again argues against the body image being a painting. To provide shading and detail in a painting, an artist varies the concentration of an applied pigment thus creating a variation in color, i.e., a pigment concentration gradient. However, the body image seen on the Shroud is provided by variation in the number of uniformly colored fibers per unit area, i.e., it is an areal density image. Thus a painter would have to monitor the number of fibers he paints per unit area of his painting while visualizing in his mind's eye the macroscopic image he is trying to create. Note that a single fiber is about half the thickness of an average human hair, putting rather severe restrictions on the size of the artist's brush and the time required to produce the finished painting." (Adler, A.D., "Chemical and Physical Aspects of the Sindonic Images," in Adler, A.D. & Crispino, D., ed., 2002, "The Orphaned Manuscript," p.15).
It is analogous to the variations in density of dots per unit area which comprises a uniform black ink colour newspaper photo:
"The various shades of color in the Image are not caused by a deeper or lighter coloring of any particular fibrils. They are caused rather by the density of colored fibrils in a given area. It is a lot like the half-tone prints in newspaper photos, where `black' is made by black ink dots bunched together, and `gray' is made by black ink dots interspersed with white areas." (Adler, A.D., in Case, T.W., 1996, "The Shroud of Turin and the C-14 Dating Fiasco," p.22).
"[Eric] Jumper explained that the difference in the shading of yellow from one area of the image to another was dependent on the number of yellowed fibers present. He made a count of them, and if one area was darker than the other, that area would contain more yellowed fibers. Regarding why we see the changes in shading that causes the image, Jumper's words best describe it: `It's like the dots of newspaper print. If you want to make an area darker, you put in more dots.'" (Lavoie, G.R., 2000, "Resurrected: Tangible Evidence That Jesus Rose from the Dead," p.64).
Stephen E. Jones
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