This is part #1 of my multi-post response to Cserhati, M. & Carter, R., 2019, "Is the Shroud of Turin authentic? Or is it a forgery?" Creation.com, 16 August. See my reply comment of 22Aug19. It is a long article, which would require an even longer series to fully respond to it, so I have decided to confine my response to the article's "Summary," referring to the main article as I do. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated. The article's words are bold to distinguish them from mine.
[Next: part #2]
Summary Controversy surrounds the Shroud of Turin (hereafter ‘the Shroud’), which some say is the
["Figure 1 (Enlarge[2]): The Shroud of Turin contains a faint dorsal (top half) and frontal (lower half) image of a man, with many features paralleling the Crucifixion.This is false. The Shroud has all the features paralleling the Crucifixion of Jesus. See my 15Jun13 (with dot points in lieu of a table):
"The Shroud is consistent with the Bible. There is no injury sustained by the man on the Shroud that does not correspond to the injuries to Christ described or implied in the Gospels ... parallels between the Gospel evidence and the Shroud evidence are ... Gospel evidence Verses Shroud evidence:Yet, the historical record of the Shroud is spotty, Misleading-see future below. multiple features on it conflict with the biblical record of events, False-see future below. and carbon dating places it squarely in the medieval era" These Young Earth Creationists, who reject carbon dating, are here using it to discredit the Shroud!-but see future below.]
• Jesus was scourged. Mt 27:26; Mk 15:15; Jn 19:1 The body is covered with the wounds of a severe scourging.
• Jesus was struck blows to the face. Mt 27:30; Mk 15:19; Lk 22:63; Jn 19:3 There is a severe swelling below the right eye and other face wounds.
• Jesus was crowned with thorns. Mt 27:29; Mk 15:17; Jn 19:2 Bleeding from the scalp indicates that a `cap' of thorns was thrust upon the head..
• Jesus was made to carry a heavy crossbeam. Jn 19:17 Scourge wounds on the shoulders are blurred, as if by the chafing of a heavy burden.
• Jesus' cross had to be carried for him, suggesting he fell under its weight. Mt 27:32; Mk 15:21; Lk 23:26 The knees are severely damaged, as if from repeated falls.
• Jesus was crucified by nails in His hands and feet. Jn 20:25-27; Col 2:14 There are blood flows as from nail wounds in the wrists and at the feet.
• Jesus' legs were not broken, but a spear was thrust into his side as a check that he was dead. Jn 19:31-37 The legs are not broken, and there is a large wound in the right side."
authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ. This cloth shows the front and rear image of a man who appears to have undergone a lot of torture. Here we present our view on the authenticity of the Shroud. Due to several lines of evidence, we think that the Shroud of Turin is not the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ: As I noted in my reply comment:
"It is strange that a Young Earth Creation publication would attack the Shroud, since: 1) it has nothing directly to do with creation; 2) it is evidence for the resurrection of Jesus (which is evidence that Christianity and therefore Creation is true); 3) it would turn off many of its creationist readers who believe that the Shroud is authentic (like yourself); and 4) it sides with atheist/agnostics like Richard Dawkins on an issue, carbon dating, that Young Earth Creationist normally reject"!These no doubt well-meaning Bible-believing Christian writers (if they read this-which I doubt) might ponder: 1) It is possible to "have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge" (Rom 10:2). Their reference list at the foot of their article does not include anything by Ian Wilson, for starters! 2) It is possible to unwittingly be "fighting against God" (Acts 5:39 NIV). 3) Jesus warned in Mt 18:6; Mk 9:42; Lk 17:1-2 [Below (enlarge)[3]] that if anyone causes a
Bible: Our conclusions are primarily based on the biblical evidence, namely that according to John 11:44 and John 20:7 the Jewish custom was to bury their dead using several cloths, not just one. The Jews buried Jesus with a face cloth, which disqualifies the Shroud as being the burial cloth of Christ. As pointed out in the previous post, this is fallacious as "One large shroud does not preclude the use of other cloths":
"One commenter on this blog, in an earlier post on the subject, said that the Shroud could not be genuine, since the Bible specifies that Joseph of Arimathea `bound' Jesus’ body in `linen cloths,' plural (John 19:40). But the synoptic Gospels say that His body was wrapped in a `linen shroud,' singular (Matthew 27:59, Mark 15:46, Luke 23:53). This is not a contradiction. One large shroud does not preclude the use of other cloths, which might have been used to `bind' the larger cloth that was wrapped around the body"[4].
[Above (enlarge): Pray Codex (or Manuscript) "Visit to the Sepulchre" lower half of Berkovits, 1969, Plate III[5]. This depicts Mark 16:1-6 where the three women disciples: Mary Magdalene; Mary the mother of the James the younger (Mk 15:40) and wife of Clopas (Jn 19:25); and Salome, sister of Mary the mother of Jesus and mother of the Apostle John (Mt 20:20; 27:56; Jn 19:25) came to finish the anointing of the body of Jesus and were told by an angel ("a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe") that Jesus was not there but had risen. See 11Jul12.]
The reason I posted the above angel appearance to the women, is that it is the same apparent problem, where one gospel (Mark 16:5) mentions only one man/angel and another gospel (Luke 24:4) mentions two, for the same incident. And the solution is the same for us Bible-believing Christians namely, "If there were two angels in the tomb, then there was at least one":
"How many men or angels appeared at the tomb? Matt 28:2; Mark 16:5; Luke 24:4; John 20:1-2, 12
An angel of the Lord on the stone (Matthew 28:1-2) - "Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave. 2And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it."
A young man (Mark 16:5) - "And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed."
Two men (Luke 24:4) - "And it happened that while they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling apparel."
Two angels (John 20:1-2,12) - "Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. 2And so she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him. 10nd she beheld two angels in white sitting, one at the head, and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying."There is no discrepancy at all. An angel of the Lord moved the stone and was sitting upon it outside (Matthew 28:2). The two men (Luke 24:4) were angels (John 20:12). Mark 16:5 presents the only potential issue and it isn't the only one at all. If there were two angels in the tomb, then there was at least one. This one was on the right. Therefore, we see that there was one angel outside and two on the inside of the tomb." ("How many men or angels appeared at the tomb?," Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry, 2011)
There is a similar apparent problem in Mt 8:28-34; Mk 5:1-16; Lk 8:26-36 where Matthew mentions "two demon-possessed men" but Mark and Luke mention only one "man" in what is clearly the same incident. Then there is Mt 20:29-34, which records that Jesus healed "two blind men" near Jericho. But Mk 10:46-52 and Lk 18:35-43 say that only one "blind beggar"/"blind man" was healed.
The Bible-believing solution is the same in each case: "If there were two [angels, linen cloths, demon-possessed men, blind men] in the same incident, then there was at least one." Bible-believing Christians (including Cserhati and Carter) who reject the Shroud, on the basis that John's gospel (Jn 20:5-7) mentions "linen cloths" (plural [Gk othonia "strips of linen" (Lk 24:12; Jn 19:40 and 20:5-7 (NIV)) and Mounce Interlinear]), not a "linen cloth" (singular), to be consistent should reject Luke's account that there were two men/angels in the empty tomb (Luke 24:4) because Mark mentions there was one (Mk 16:5). They should also reject Matthew's account that Jesus healed two demon-possessed Gadarene/Gerasene men by sending the demons into a herd of pigs (Mt 8:28-34) because Mark and Luke mention only one (Mk 5:1-16; Lk 8:26-36). And they should also reject Matthew's account which says that Jesus healed two blind men near Jericho (Mt 20:29-34), because Mark and Luke record there was one (Mk 10:46-52; Lk 18:35-43).
And there is not even that problem in the case of the Shroud, because nowhere does any gospel state that that there was only one burial cloth. And no one on the Shroud pro-authenticity side, as far as I am aware, claims that the Shroud was the only burial cloth of Jesus. As far as I am aware, everyone in the Shroud pro-authenticity community accepts that the Sudarium of Oviedo is "the face cloth [Gk. soudarion], which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths [othonia] but folded up in a place by itself" in Jn 20:7.
Furthermore, Jesus was buried with seventy-five pounds of extremely sticky spices, according to John 19:40, whereas the Shroud shows no signs of them. They are setting up a strawman and then refuting that:
"A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent"[6].John 19:40, in context John 19:38-40 (NIV), says nothing about "extremely sticky spices":
"38 Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. 39 He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. 40 Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs."As can be seen above, it simply says "a mixture of myrrh and aloes."
[Right: Dried myrrh resin[7].]
... coagulates quickly ... [and] becomes hard and glossy":"When a tree's wound penetrates through the bark and into the sapwood, the tree secretes a resin. Myrrh gum, like frankincense, is such a resin. When people harvest myrrh, they wound the trees repeatedly to bleed them of the gum. Myrrh gum is waxy and coagulates quickly. After the harvest, the gum becomes hard and glossy. The gum is yellowish and may be either clear or opaque. It darkens deeply as it ages, and white streaks emerge"[8].The Greek word translated "mixture," migma from "mingle," can either be liquid, as in "diluting wine" or dry as in "mixing ... two sorts of grain"[9].
This very large quantity of 75 pounds (= 34 kgs) of spices [Gk aromaton = aromatics] shows that simple anointing was not their intended function, but that they would have been packed around the body, as we today would pack ice[10]. Their function was to postpone putrefaction temporarily until the washing and anointing could be completed after the Sabbath and Passover (Mk 16:1; Lk 23:56-24:1)[11]. They would therefore have been in dry blocks or in powdered or granulated form[12]. This is supported by Jn 19:40's "with [Gk meta] the spices"[13] (see above), not epi "on" or peri "around" but with the body of Jesus.
As pointed out in 21Jan16, the Greek word othonia is not a collective plural to be translated "linen cloths" (as wrongly in the ESV). My New Testament Greek lexicons are unanimous in stating that othonia is a plural of othonion, which is a diminutive of othone, "a linen cloth," hence othonion is "a small linen cloth," "a bandage" (as rightly in the NIV) and othonia its plural, are "strips of linen," "bandages"[14]. Therefore it was the strips of linen (othonia) which were in contact with the packs of dried myrrh and aloes, not the Shroud (sindon) :
"Another term is introduced by the New Testament writers, namely othonia, defined as `binding cloths or strips of linen.' We read in John 19:40: `They took Jesus' body and bound it in linen cloths ["strips of linen"] (othoniois) with the spices, as is the custom among the Jews in preparing for burial.' Luke 24:12 also uses the term: `But Peter got up and ran to the tomb, and when he stooped down he saw only the linen cloths ["strips of linen"](othonia).' The late Shroud author Werner Bulst, SJ., pointed out that othonia as used in John 19:40 refers to a narrow cloth, a strip (such as is used for bandaging a wound). This is equivalent to the bindings (keriai) with which Lazarus was bound (Jn 11:44). Likewise the verb deo found in John 11:44 and 19:40 always meant to bind in the strict sense and never `to wrap up in or envelop' indicating that these were bandage strips differing from the larger cloth. These binding strips were used to bind the hands and feet to permit easy carrying of the body, especially through the narrow entrance to the cave-tombs and to secure the position of the body (with hands folded across the loins). Rigor mortis likely began on the Cross and was broken to bind the hands and feet for carrying. Bulst points out that on the body image of the Shroud there is a gap above the wrists: Strangely, a little above the wrist, there is a gap of about a hand's breadth with no trace of the blood that trickled and caked along the forearm muscle of the Crucified. The blood transfers on the forearms are otherwise unusually clear and sharply outlined. The missing imprint above the wrists on either forearm would be readily explained if a linen strip had been bound about them here and knotted to keep the arms in the position as they are seen on the Cloth. Without some such bond, this position of the arms would he impossible"[15].Moreover, it is not true that "the Shroud shows no signs of" myrrh and aloes. While STURP did not detect those spices[16], "Pier Luigi Baima Bollone, professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Turin, identified traces of aloe and myrrh on the Shroud, principally in the bloodstained areas"[17].
Continued in the part #2 of this series.
Notes:
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. Image of the Shroud in the article, with no acknowledgment of source (which is plagiarism), but it appears to be from, "Shroud of Turin," Wikipedia, 7 September 2019. [return]
3. "Warning to not Cause Someone to Sin – Matthew 18:6," Mission Venture Ministries, 19 April 2018. [return]
4. Veith, G., 2019, "The Shroud of Turin Is Not a Medieval Hoax After All?" Patheos, July 26. [return]
5. Berkovits, I., 1969, "Illuminated Manuscripts in Hungary, XI-XVI Centuries," Horn, Z., transl., West, A., rev., Irish University Press: Shannon, Ireland, plate III. [return]
6. "Straw man," Wikipedia, 9 September 2019. [return]
7. "File:Commiphora-myrrha-resin-myrrh.jpg," Wikimedia Commons, 30 October 2018. [return]
8. "Myrrh," Wikipedia, 9 August 2019. [return]
9. Zodhiates, S., 1992, "The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament," AMG Publishers: Chattanooga TN, Third printing, 1994, p.985. [return]
10. Clift, M., 1985, "Contributions from B.S.T.S. members," BSTS Newsletter, No. 10, April, pp.11-13, 12-13). [return]
11. Antonacci, M., 2000, "Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY, p.117. [return]
12. Antonacci, 2000, p.117. [return]
13. Vignon, P., 1902, "The Shroud of Christ," University Books: New York NY, Reprinted, 1970, p.49; Bulst, W., 1957, "The Shroud of Turin," McKenna, S. & Galvin, J.J., transl., Bruce Publishing Co: Milwaukee WI, p.94. [return]
14. Bagster, S., ed., 1870, "The Analytical Greek Lexicon," Samuel Bagster and Sons: London, c. 1960, reprinted, p.283; Thayer, J.H., 1901, "A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament," T & T. Clark: Edinburgh, Fourth edition, Reprinted, 1961, p.439; Abbott-Smith, G., 1937, "A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament," [1921], T. & T. Clark: Edinburgh, Third edition, Reprinted, 1956, p.411; Bauer, W., Arndt, W.F., Gingrich, F.W. & Danker, F.W., 1979, "A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, Second edition, p.555; Zodhiates, 1992, p.1028. [return]
15. Iannone, J.C., 1998, "The Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence," St Pauls: Staten Island NY, p.81. [return]
16. Rogers, R.N., 2008, "A Chemist's Perspective on the Shroud of Turin," Lulu Press: Raleigh NC, p.44; de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London, p.154. [return]
17. Morgan, R., 1982, "Some Italian Scientific Results," Shroud News, No 12, pp.6-10, 6; Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: Malta, pp.205-206; Iannone, 1998, p.87. [return]
Posted: 8 September 2019. Updated: 7 December 2019.
Posts
9 comments:
I was also very disappointed with Creation.com's write up on the Shroud. I find it very misleading because they did not deal with a number of known facts about the shroud. In interacting with co-author Matthew Cserhati I get the impression his mind was already made up (that it was a forgery) and all he needed to do to prove it false was prove it did not date to the first century. For that he relied heavily and the flawed carbon 14 test which - for anyone he cares to examine what happened - used samples which have been shown to be contaminated with later (16th century) cloth. STRP chemist Ray Rogers found cotton in the linen weave proving contamination, and CMI doesn't seem to care.
I likewise did a complete article refuting all their major objections to authenticity titled:
Is the Shroud of Turin Authentic? The Unconsidered Evidence It includes many interviews with STRP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) Members.
A month or so ago I engaged very respectfully with a Christian on the question of the Shroud, and her objections were twofold: 1) the Shroud does not comport with Scripture, and 2) she didn't need the Shroud to believe. After a few interchanges, it became obvious that she had heard her objections from someone she regarded as authoritative, and had not done any independent investigation, let alone a searching investigation.
Her tenor was very similar to the tenor of this article, which in parts seems theological in nature. The ownership of the Shroud is irrelevant to its authenticity, but may be a factor in the underlying perspective of some. Equally irrelevant is whether an individual's belief is based in Scripture alone and is not based in any part on the Shroud.
To me, the Shroud is a wondrous and beautiful gift from God, a demonstration of His Love, and a miracle reserved for us folks who live in these harsh and faithless times.
Thank you so much for your continuing devotion to the Shroud and to your Faith.
Duane
>I was also very disappointed with Creation.com's write up on the Shroud.
They have definitely `shot themselves in the foot’!
But on St Paul’s principle in Php 1:15-18:
"15 Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. 16 The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. 18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice."
I rejoice, because the Shroud (which is the very image of Christ and has on it His blood) is proclaimed!
>I find it very misleading because they did not deal with a number of known facts about the shroud.
Which is a form of lying! You can `prove' anything by leaving out the positive for, and accentuating the negative against, something.
>In interacting with co-author Matthew Cserhati I get the impression his mind was already made up (that it was a forgery) and all he needed to do to prove it false was prove it did not date to the first century.
It is tells you something about him that he has the same mindset about the Shroud that atheists, agnostics and anti-Christians have!
>For that he relied heavily and the flawed carbon 14 test which - for anyone he cares to examine what happened - used samples which have been shown to be contaminated with later (16th century) cloth.
Which itself is hypocritical because Young Earth Creationists like him and Creation.com's readers reject radiocarbon dating because "the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by this process date to around 50,000 years ago," which is older than they claim that the Earth and Universe is!
>STRP chemist Ray Rogers found cotton in the linen weave proving contamination, and CMI doesn't seem to care.
See my previous post: "That there was younger carbon contamination and/or threads from a medieval repair included in the radiocarbon dating samples does not, of itself, explain why the first century Shroud had the `bull's eye' 1260-1390 = 1325±65 radiocarbon date. For an explanation of both, see my possible reconciliation of the carbon contamination and/or medieval repair theories with my hacker theory:
"But looking at the great variability of Arizona's C14 atom counts across its subsamples A1-A8 ... it has just now occurred to me that the carbon contamination and/or medieval repair theories and my hacker theory may not be incompatible. What if Linick's program did not substitute the C14 atom counts coming from the Shroud, but in a mathematically sophisticated way inflated them to 13th-14th century dates? If so, then the variability of the C14 atom counts could reflect actual carbon-14 variability across the Shroud sample, due to contamination and/or younger repair threads ... But the 13th-14th century dates of the Shroud samples would be due to Linick's program inflating that carbon-14 variability to 13th-14th century date levels!"
>I likewise did a complete article refuting all their major objections to authenticity titled:
Is the Shroud of Turin Authentic? The Unconsidered Evidence It includes many interviews with STRP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) Members.
Congratulations! I may refer to it.
Stephen E. Jones
Anonymous
>A month or so ago I engaged very respectfully with a Christian on the question of the Shroud, and her objections were twofold: 1) the Shroud does not comport with Scripture, and
>2) she didn't need the Shroud to believe. After a few interchanges, it became obvious that she had heard her objections from someone she regarded as authoritative, and had not done any independent investigation, let alone a searching investigation.
That's normal. Most people, including Christians, don't know how to do "a searching investigation." So they believe what someone they regard as authoritative, believes.
That leads to the problem of the blind leading the blind' (Mt 15:14; Lk 6:39). If they are Christians, it is not a serious problem, but if they are non-Christians then they would have rejected an opportunity to be saved by Jesus from eternal death to eternal life:
Jn 3:16-18, 36: "16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God ... 36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him."
>Her tenor was very similar to the tenor of this article, which in parts seems theological in nature.
I have only quickly read the article, so I don't know what their "theological" objections are. But being Young Earth Creationists, I imagine it will be an extreme Protestantism, that unless it's in the Bible, it isn't true. If so, they don't consider that for the first millennium and a half of Christianity there was no Bible in peoples' own languages and so icons and images based on the Shroud were the means of preaching the Gospel.
The Protestant Reformers did not create Christian Europe. They inherited an already Christian Europe, built up over the previous ~1500 years without the Bible in the peoples' own languages.
>The ownership of the Shroud is irrelevant to its authenticity, but may be a factor in the underlying perspective of some. Equally irrelevant is whether an individual's belief is based in Scripture alone and is not based in any part on the Shroud.
If their "theological" problem is that the Shroud is a Roman Catholic relic: 1) there were no Protestant churches when the Shroud first appeared in undisputed history at Lirey, France, in c.1355; and 2) the Shroud was not owned by the Roman Catholic church until 1983; and 3) the Roman Catholic church, to its shame will neither confirm nor deny that the Shroud is authentic.
>To me, the Shroud is a wondrous and beautiful gift from God, a demonstration of His Love, and a miracle reserved for us folks who live in these harsh and faithless times.
Agreed. It has been noted by many, that the Shroud is a sort of `time capsule' which has features, like photographic negativity and three-dimensionality, etc, etc, which can only be seen and understood in this modern scientific age, e.g.:
[continued]
[continued]
"The Shroud lay virtually unknown for 1,900 years and would have been dismissed as a grubby medieval forgery if it hadn't been for the advances of modern technoscience. The Shroud's first encounter with the technology of the modern age was when it was first photographed by Secondo Pia in 1898. Pia was astounded, when he developed his plates, to discover that his photographic negative was actually a positive image of a man's face. That meant the image on the Shroud was, in effect, a photographic negative. However, it was not just a photographic negative. The unique qualities of the Shroud image were confirmed in 1976, when a photograph of the image was put into a VP-8 Image Analyzer — a gadget that transforms the lights and darks in images to three-dimensional forms. An eerie 3-D image of a man's face emerged — something that the gadget cannot produce from photographs or paintings. `This spatial data encoded into the image actually eliminates photography and painting as the possible mechanism for its creation and allows us to conclude that the image was formed while the cloth was draped over an actual human body,’ according to Barrie Schwortz, an internationally recognized authority on the Shroud. `So the VP-8 Image Analyzer not only revealed a very important characteristic of the Shroud image, but, historically, it also provided the actual motivation to form the team that would ultimately go and investigate it.’ The amazing discovery of the three-dimensional image prompted a team of scientists to conduct the most extensive research on the Shroud in 1978: STURP (the Shroud of Turin Research Project). The scientists spent two years preparing to conduct the tests and more than 120 hours rigorously examining the scientific qualities of the Shroud." (Longenecker, D., 2015, "The Shroud of Turin and Technoscience," National Catholic Register, 4 July)
>Thank you so much for your continuing devotion to the Shroud and to your Faith.
Thank you.
Stephen E. Jones
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MY POLICIES. Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. To avoid time-wasting debate, I normally allow only one comment per individual under each one of my posts. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.
Hi Stephen
Please let me have your email address to discuss an article for the British Society for the Turin Shroud.
David Rolfe, Editor.
David
>Hi Stephen
>
>Please let me have your email address to discuss an article for the British Society for the Turin Shroud.
>
>David Rolfe, Editor.
I have emailed you at David Rolfe editorial@bstsnewsletter.com with my email address.
Stephen E. Jones
Stephen:
>Which is a form of lying! You can `prove' anything by leaving out the positive for, and accentuating the negative against, something.
Well there it is out in the open. I didn't want to call it that, and merely referenced it as the "unconsidered evidence", but you are of course correct - if they knowingly withheld the evidence. It could be their research was so shoddy that they didn't know about the evidence. Another reason to just call it "unconsidered evidence".
>It is tells you something about him that he has the same mindset about the Shroud that atheists, agnostics and anti-Christians have!
Yes that occurred to me too. And it seems they don't recognize that. Most unfortunate. As I told co-author Cserhati, with such clearly apparent bias in this article, I will now have to read all material from CMI more carefully and critically.
> From Anonymous:
To me, the Shroud is a wondrous and beautiful gift from God, a demonstration of His Love, and a miracle reserved for us folks who live in these harsh and faithless times.
Agreed!
Duane
>>Which is a form of lying! You can `prove' anything by leaving out the positive for, and accentuating the negative against, something.
>Well there it is out in the open. I didn't want to call it that, and merely referenced it as the "unconsidered evidence", but you are of course correct - if they knowingly withheld the evidence. It could be their research was so shoddy that they didn't know about the evidence. Another reason to just call it "unconsidered evidence".
It is hard to believe that the reason Cserhati and Carter "did not deal with a number of known facts about the shroud" is because "they didn't know about the evidence."
Either way, they are guilty of scholarly dishonesty or scholarly incompetence!
>>It is tells you something about him that he has the same mindset about the Shroud that atheists, agnostics and anti-Christians have!
I had posted on 08May18a about this issue of Christians siding with and sounding like atheists, agnostics and anti-Christians in attacking the Shroud:
"Since the evidence is overwhelming that Shroud is Jesus' burial sheet, Christians who oppose the Shroud are ... unwittingly "fighting against God" (Acts 5:39 NIV)! Moreover, they must employ falsehoods to do it ... A notable example was evangelical Christian apologist Josh McDowell, who in the 1980 edition of his "Answers to Tough Questions Skeptics Ask About the Christian Faith" ... used the falsehoods, half-truths and lies of anti-Christian atheists/agnostics to argue against the Shroud. The result was not that sceptics were more receptive to the Christian faith, but rather at least one anti-Christian cited McDowell's arguments against the Shroud as further evidence for his position that Christianity was false!"
>Yes that occurred to me too. And it seems they don't recognize that. Most unfortunate.
It will be more than "Most unfortunate" for them on the Day of Judgement! As Christians they will be saved, but their reward will be reduced:
"Jesus who is "the Truth" (Jn 14:6) will surely reduce the rewards of Christians [see 08May18b] ... who employ untruths to oppose His very burial Shroud!"
As I told co-author Cserhati, with such clearly apparent bias in this article, I will now have to read all material from CMI more carefully and critically.
As I wrote above, they have `shot themselves in the foot' in attacking the Shroud. And for what purpose? In opposing the Shroud, they are opposing evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, and therefore opposing evidence of Christianity, which includes Creation! And they are also alienating a section of their readership which accepts the overwhelming evidence that the Shroud is Jesus' burial sheet.
Sorry Duane but this has been your last comment on this topic, under this post #1, as per my policy above, "I normally allow only one comment per individual under each one of my posts". However, you can comment under posts #2 ... of this series.
Stephen E. Jones
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