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This is the January 2021 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. I had fallen behind in these so I am in the middle of posting three months of issues in a row, December 2020, this January 2021 and next February 2021. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated. The article's words are bold to distinguish them from mine.
News:
"The Shroud of Turin: Jesus' Bloodstained Burial Cloth or a Fascinating Forgery?," Ancient Origins, 19 January 2021, Liz Leafloor. The Shroud of Turin is believed by many to be the bloodstained burial cloth Jesus of Nazareth was wrapped in after his crucifixion ... a pale sheet of woven fabric approximately 14-feet (4.5 meters) – long ... The image of a prone man
[Right (enlarge): "The full length of the Shroud of Turin. Scientists and scholars cannot resolve the mystery of the shroud." (Public Domain. Rotated left 90°)]
That modern science still, after over a century of trying, "cannot resolve the mystery of the shroud," is among the strongest proofs that the Shroudman's image was not a product of human art but is that of Jesus created in a `snapshot' of His resurrection:"Even from the limited available information, a hypothetical glimpse of the power operating at the moment of creation of the Shroud's image may be ventured. In the darkness of the Jerusalem tomb the dead body of Jesus lay, unwashed, covered in blood, on a stone slab. Suddenly, there is a burst of mysterious power from it. In that instant ... its image ... becomes indelibly fused onto the cloth, preserving for posterity a literal `snapshot' of the Resurrection"[2]!
with hands folded can be made out on the cloth, with both the front and back views of the head meeting neatly at the middle of the sheet, suggesting it was folded over the front and back of a naked body in death. Countless horrible wounds to the body are revealed through the images on the fabric, from slashes to gouges, piercings, and welts. These images strongly indicate to proponents the evidence of crucifixion and the Biblical description of the death of Jesus ... Further proof beyond reasonable doubt that the Shroudman's image is a `snapshot' of Jesus as He was being resurrected is that not one of the so-called `replications' of the Shroud even attempt to depict the "horrible wounds to the body ... from slashes to gouges, piercings, and welts" of the man on the Shroud.
[Left (enlarge): "Anatomy of the Shroud"[3], showing wounds and bloodstains on the Shroud man's image which match the Gospels' accounts of the beatings (Mt 26:67-68; 27:30; Lk 22:64; Jn 18:22; 19:3), scourging (Mt 27:26; Mk 15:15; Lk 23:16; Jn 19:1), crowned with thorns (Mt 27:29; Mk 15:17; Jn 19:2,5), crucifixion (Mt 27:35,38,44; Mk 15:24-27,32; Lk 23:33; Jn 19:16-18), death (Mt 27:50; Mk 15:37,39; Lk 23:46; Jn 19:30), legs not broken (Jn 19:32-33), speared in the side (Jn 19:34) of Jesus.]
... Historical record can place the shroud in the late 1300s ... This is misleading. As I have pointed out in previous posts [21Jun20, 24Jul20 & 15Aug20], that the Shroud first appeared in the undisputed historical record at Lirey, France in c.1355, meaning that the vast majority of anti-authenticists don't dispute that. But that is not the same as the Shroud first appeared in the "historical record." As I quoted in 24May20 (footnotes omitted):
"In 1207, after the sack of Constantinople in 1204, Nicholas Mesarites, keeper of the Emperor's relics in the Pharos Chapel, Constantinople, recalled that in 1201, in that chapel, was `the sindon [which] wrapped the mysterious, naked dead body [of Christ] after the Passion' (my emphasis). The Greek word variously translated `mysterious', `indefinable' and `uncircumscribed', is aperilepton, which literally means `un-outlined' or `outlineless'. The Shroud-image uniquely has no outline [see 11Jun16], so there could be no stronger proof that the Shroud in Constantinople is that of Lirey, Chambéry and Turin!"This is objective, historical evidence that the Shroud existed in Constantinople in 1201, over a century and a half (154 years) before it was exhibited at Lirey in c. 1355! And 59 years before the earliest possible radiocarbon date of 1260! Therefore the Shroud appeared in the historical record in at least 13th century Constantinople, irrespective of whether anti-authenticists accept it!
It was deeded to the House of Savoy in Italy in 1453, and suffered damage in a fire. Patches and repair-work have been done at various times ... It was set in a chapel in the 17th century [1694], but it wasn't until 200 years later [1898] that it was put on public display and first photographed ... It was these
[Above (enlarge) "Full length negatives of the Shroud of Turin." (Public Domain)]
photographs which elevated the cloth from relic to sensation. The photos were not remarkable in and of themselves, until viewed in the reverse negative, whereupon a detailed image of a wounded, bearded man became clearly visible. But photographic negativity was an unknown unknown until the early 19th century:
"In 1816, Nicéphore Niépce, using paper coated with silver chloride, succeeded in photographing the images formed in a small camera, but the photographs were negatives, darkest where the camera image was lightest and vice versa, and they were not permanent in the sense of being reasonably light-fast; like earlier experimenters, Niépce could find no way to prevent the coating from darkening all over when it was exposed to light for viewing"[4]So a medieval forger would not, and could not, create a full-length, double body image of Jesus, in negative!
It had previously been suspected that the stains and images were painted on the linen by an artist at some point in its history, but the discovery of the detailed body image found embedded within the fabric drastically rewrote theories, and convinced many that the ... image was transferred from Jesus' body onto the cloth ... upon his resurrection ... If this was indeed the death shroud which encased the body of the historical Jesus of Nazareth, that would date the cloth to 30 AD, the biblical date of the death of Jesus ... A variety of tests have been carried out on the shroud ... in 1977 the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) was born. Their findings, based on a gamut of rigorous tests, were reported in 1981, stating:
"We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist. The blood stains are composed of hemoglobin and also give a positive test for serum albumin. The image is an ongoing mystery and until further chemical studies are made, perhaps by this group of scientists, or perhaps by some scientists in the future, the problem remains unsolved."The researchers found no sign of artificial pigments, meaning the image had been made by a real human body, but the question of how this had happened was not answered ...
Adding to the wealth of strange findings on the enigmatic shroud, Italian researchers in 2015 discovered that the cloth may have been made in India, and contains DNA from all over the world. By sequencing DNA from dust and pollen on the shroud, the origins of people and types of environments that the cloth has come into contact with have been revealed. It shows that the cloth may have been manufactured in India, and traveled the world before coming to Italy in the Medieval period, giving rise to doubts about a Medieval European origin.
In October 2015, an article in Nature Reports, "Uncovering the sources of DNA found on the Turin Shroud," in its Abstract reported:
"The Turin Shroud is traditionally considered to be the burial cloth in which the body of Jesus Christ was wrapped after his death approximately 2000 years ago. Here, we report the main findings from the analysis of genomic DNA extracted from dust particles vacuumed from parts of the body image and the lateral edge used for radiocarbon dating. Several plant taxa native to the Mediterranean area were identified as well as species with a primary center of origin in Asia, the Middle East or the Americas but introduced in a historical interval later than the Medieval period. Regarding human mitogenome lineages, our analyses detected sequences from multiple subjects of different ethnic origins, which clustered into a number of Western Eurasian haplogroups, including some known to be typical of Western Europe, the Near East, the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian sub-continent. Such diversity does not exclude a Medieval origin in Europe but it would be also compatible with the historic path followed by the Turin Shroud during its presumed journey from the Near East. Furthermore, the results raise the possibility of an Indian manufacture of the linen cloth"[5].I covered this bombshell `out of left field' scientific evidence for the Shroud's authenticity in my posts of 18Oct15, 25Oct15, 10Nov15, 24Nov15, 30Nov15 & 04Dec15.
Plant types revealed from DNA sequencing included horsetail, clovers, ryegrass and chicory – pointing to origins from Asia, Middle East ... As can be seen below in Figure 1 of the
[Above (enlarge): "Figure 1: Plant DNA species found on the Turin Shroud"[6]. The text box states: "Before 1353, historical information connects the Shroud with: ■ Jerusalem (Israel) 30-33, ■ Sanliurfa (Turkey) 200-944, ■ Constantinople (Turkey) 944-1204. After 1353, official documents testify to the presence of the Shroud in: ■ Lirey (France) 1353-1257, ■ Chambery (France) 1502-1578, ■ Turin (Italy) 1578-today"]
article, some of this plant DNA found in the interspace between the underside of the Shroud and its Holland cloth backing, which was sewn on in 1534 in Chambéry, France, and only partially opened in 1978 and 1988 inside Turin Cathedral, came from Jerusalem, Sanliurfa (ancient Edessa) and Constantinople. Each of these were on "the historic path followed by the Turin Shroud during its presumed journey from the Near East"! And since the Shroud has since 1355 an undisputed, documented history within Western Europe, this is further evidence against the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud claim that "the flax from which the shroud's linen was made was harvested between 1260 and 1390 AD"[7]. Anti-authenticists could claim (but none do) that the flax from which the Shroud's linen was made was harvested between 1260-1390 in India and somehow the Shroud turned up in the tiny village of Lirey, France in c.1355, via Jerusalem, Edessa and Constantinople!
Moreover, as can be seen in Figure 2 below, human mitochondrial DNA that belonged to numerous individuals: six subgroups of haplotype H, as well as representatives from haplogroups U2, U5, R0a, R7, R8, L3c, M39, and M56. As with the plant DNA, this wide diversity of human mtDNA in the interspace between the underside of the Shroud and its
[Above: Extract from "Figure 2: Human mtDNA haplogroups found on the Turin Shroud"[8].]
Holland cloth backing, which (again) was sewn on in 1534 in Chambéry, France, and only partially opened in 1978 and 1988 inside Turin Cathedral, is consistent with the Shroud having had an at least ~15 centuries history up to 1534, including Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Greece and France. But it is inconsistent with the Shroud having had only a ~2-3 centuries history, in France only, from 1260-1390 to 1534, as the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud claimed[9].
How was the Image Made? For all the scientific tests, no good answers present themselves on how the image in the shroud came to be, save, as believers would have it, a miracle. It has been determined the images are not painted on, but are imbued within the linen, and numerous attempts have been made to recreate the images, and to reproduce the unusual penetration of the color into the fabric, but have all fallen short ... Indeed they have! Logician Irving Copi (1917-2002, pointed out that it is the flip side of the Argument from Ignorance, that "if a certain event had occurred, evidence for it would have been discovered by qualified investigators" - if the Shroud is a forgery, 20th-21st century science would certainly have discovered it by now-after more than a century of trying and "In such a case it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its nonoccurrence" - therefore the Shroud is not a forgery but is the burial sheet of Jesus recorded in the Gospels (Mt 27:59; Mk 15:46; Lk 23:53) imprinted with His resurrected image!:
"A qualification should be made at this point. In some circumstances it can safely be assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence for it would have been discovered by qualified investigators. In such a case it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its nonoccurrence. Of course, the proof here is not based on ignorance but on our knowledge that if it had occurred it would be known. For example, if a serious security investigation fails to unearth any evidence that Mr. X is a foreign agent, it would be wrong to conclude that their research has left us ignorant. It has rather established that Mr. X is not one. Failure to draw such conclusions is the other side of the bad coin of innuendo, as when one says of a man that there is `no proof' that he is a scoundrel. In some cases not to draw a conclusion is as much a breach of correct reasoning as it would be to draw a mistaken conclusion"[10].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. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, p.251; 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.234. [return]
3. Weaver, K.F., 1980, "Science Seeks to Solve ... The Mystery of the Shroud," National Geographic, Vol. 157, June, pp.736-737. [return]
4. "History of photography: 1816 to 1833: Niépce's earliest fixed images," Wikipedia, 4 March 2021. [return]
5. Barcaccia, G., et al., 2015, "Uncovering the sources of DNA found on the Turin Shroud," Nature, Scientific Reports 5, 5 October, pp.1-11. [return]
6. Barcaccia, et al., 2015, p.4. [return]
7. Gove, H.E., 1996, "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud," Institute of Physics Publishing: Bristol UK, p.301. [return]
8. Barcaccia, et al., 2015, p.6. [return]
9. Damon, P.E., et al., 1989, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," Nature, Vol. 337, 16th February, pp.611-615, p.611. [return]
10. Copi, I.M., 1953, "Introduction to Logic," Macmillan: New York NY, Seventh Edition, 1986, p.95. [return]
Posted: 3 March 2021. Updated: 24 July 2021.
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