Copyright © Stephen E. Jones[1]Objections answered (2) #33
This is "Objections answered (2)," part #33 of my Turin Shroud Encyclopedia, which will help me write Chapter "21. Objections answered" of my book in progress, "Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus!" See 06Jul17, 03Jun18, 04Apr22, 13Jul22, 8 Nov 22 & 20Jun24. It follows my "Objections answered (1) #25" of 07Jul23.
I am basing this "Objections answered (2)" on an online article, "The
[Right (enlarge): Spencer McDaniel - Bad Ancient]
Shroud of Turin Is Definitely a Hoax," by a Spencer McDaniel." She (a transgender person) is described as:
"Spencer McDaniel is an aspiring scholar of ancient Greek cultural and social history. She graduated with high distinction from Indiana University Bloomington in May 2022 with a BA in history and classical studies (Ancient Greek and Latin languages), with departmental honors in history. She is currently a student in the MA program in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at Brandeis University. Some of her main historical interests include ancient religion, mythology, and folklore; gender and sexuality; ethnicity; and interactions between Greeks and "foreign" cultures. She is the author of the blog Tales of Times Forgotten, where she writes regular, in-depth posts about ancient history and related topics."
Newcomers start with: "The Turin Shroud in a nutshell"[Index #1] [Previous: Image of Edessa #32] [Next: Science and the Shroud #34]
As with the format of "Objections answered (1)," I will present McDaniel's objections to the Shroud being Jesus' burial sheet under headings using her words as far as possible. They will be in bullet points, enclosed in single quotation marks as from an imaginary objector, which will be closer to what will appear in my book.
• `The Shroud of Turin is a hoax that was originally created in France around the 1350s AD by an artist trained in the Gothic figurative style'
"Unfortunately, we can be virtually certain that the Shroud of Turin is a hoax that was originally created in France in around the 1350s AD by an artist trained in the Gothic figurative style as part of a faith-healing scam"[MS20].
McDaniel is a scholar but her article is
not scholarly. She cites no references for her assertions and neither does it have a bibliography of what Shroud literature she has read (if any).
Who was this "artist"? And who was the artist who "trained" him "in the Gothic figurative style"? McDaniels is postulating not one, but two unknown artists! Where are her supporting references from Gothic art experts that the Shroud is a work of mid-14th century Gothic art? And since the Shroud image is not painted (from my book in progress):
Not painted It has been known since at least the 1930s that the Shroudman's image is not painted. By examining the Shroud with a magnifying glass during the 1931 exposition, English Roman Catholic prelate Arthur Barnes (1861-1936), could see individual threads in the image area with no colouring matter covering them[BA34, 10-11, 14. See below]. Sceptics now admit that the man's image is not painted. Prof. Edward Hall (1924-2001), then Director of the Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory, when in 1988 collecting his laboratory's Shroud sample, examined the Shroud with a magnifying glass and satisfied himself that the image was not painted[WI98, 198]. Sceptic Joe Nickell (1944-) has admitted that, "...convincing evidence for any painting medium (that is, oil, egg tempera, etc.) on shroud image fibers is lacking"[NJ87, 99]. Former Nature editor Philip Ball (1962-), likewise conceded, "the shroud ... does not seem to have been painted ..."[BP05]. The Shroud of Turin Project (STURP) confirmed in 1981 that no paint, pigment, or dye constitutes the man's image[SS81].
(and it is not a statue), the Shroud
cannot be a work of Gothic art!
[Left (enlarge[11Jul16]): Photomicrograph taken by optical engineer Kevin Moran (1934-2019) of 15 microns (15 thousandths of a millimetre) diameter Shroud fibres attached to one of Max Frei (1913–83)'s Shroud sticky tapes. Each image (yellow) fibre can be clearly seen, with no colouring matter (paint, pigment or dye) covering it. The yellow colour of the image fibres is due to a physical change in the flax: dehydrative oxidation and conjugation of cellulose[27Jul24]. The boundaries between the image (yellow) and non-image parts of each fibre are only about 1 micron (1 thousandth of a millimetre) wide. No human artist/forger can paint, etc., with such precision. These fibres are too thin (about half the thickness of an average human hair, and there must be many millions of them), to be individually painted or dyed, etc, by a medieval forger!]
• `The Shroud of Turin is a hoax that was originally created in France around the 1350s AD as part of a faith-healing scam'
The words "faith-healing scam" are Joe Nickell's, which McDaniel plagiarises by not putting them within quotation marks and not including a reference attributing them to Nickell[PGW]:
"In 1389 a bishop reported to Pope Clement VII that it had been used in a faith-healing scam in which persons were hired to feign illness, then, when the cloth was revealed to them, to pretend to have been healed, `so that money might cunningly be wrung' from unsuspecting pilgrims. `Eventually,' he said, after `diligent inquiry and examination,' the `fraud' was uncovered. The cloth had been `cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who painted it' (D'Arcis 1389)"[NJ15]
And it is
Nickell who is running a `sceptics scam' in making a living off unsuspecting sceptics by continuing to repeat Bishop
Pierre d'Arcis (r. 1377-95)' false, "The cloth had been `cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who painted it'" claim, when (as we
saw above) Nickell admitted in
1987 (~37 years ago) that the Shroudman's image is
not painted!
As for Nickell's `faith healing scam' claim, he bases this on d'Arcis claim in his 1389 memorandum that:
"This story was put about not only in the kingdom of France, but, so to speak, through out the world, so that from all parts people came together to view it. And further to attract the multitude so that money might cunningly be wrung from them, pretended miracles were worked, certain men being hired to represent themselves as healed at the moment of the exhibition of the shroud, which all believed to be the shroud of our Lord"[WI79, 267] "
There are multiple problems with d'Arcis' statement above: • d'Arcis' claim above is at best
hearsay[
SD89, 15;
AM00, 152-153], or at worst he just made it up[
AM00, 153]. • d'Arcis provided no documentary evidence to support his claims[
SD89, 15;
AM00, 153]. And as
we have seen there was no "artist who painted" the Shroud because it is not "painted," so that key claim in d'Arcis' memorandum is
false! • The
evidence is overwhelming that the Shroud is "the shroud of our Lord." So it is possible that there were real miracles of healing associated with that first undisputed exposition of the Shroud. • Neither Geoffroy I's widow,
Jeanne de Vergy (c.1332–1428), nor the Lirey church, were wealthy after the c. 1355 exposition. Following her husband's 1356 death, Jeanne had to appeal to the young future king
Charles V (r. 1364-80) for her infant son
Geoffroy II (1352-98) to be granted the two houses in Paris that Charles' captured father,
King John II (r. 1350-64) had promised
Geoffroy I (c. 1306-56)[
WI98, 279]. And the small wooden Lirey church fell into disrepair[
WI79, 213;
SH81, 29;
WI91, 25;
TF06, 47] until it was replaced in stone over 170 years later in 1526[
WI98, 287].
Yet according to d'Arcis and Nickell, Jeanne de Vergy, and/or the Lirey church, would have been fabulously wealthy from all that "money" they allegedly had "cunningly ... wrung from" the "multitude"! This is further evidence that d'Arcis was not simply mistaken, but was actually
lying in his memorandum!
Significantly, d'Arcis in his memorandum had to defend himself from the allegation that he was "acting through jealousy and cupidity and to obtain possession of the cloth for myself":
"The scandal is upheld and defended and its supporters cause it to be spread abroad among the people that I am acting through jealousy and cupidity and to obtain possession of the cloth for myself"[WI79, 269]
McDaniel continues:
"We know this primarily because there is no definitive record of the shroud prior to the fourteenth century and the earliest definitive record of the shroud is a letter recording that the forger who made it had confessed, but also because of a wide array of other factors. For instance, the shroud doesn't match the kinds of funerary wrappings that were used in the Judaea in the first-century AD or the specific description of Jesus's funerary wrappings given in the Gospel of John. The fabric of the shroud has also been conclusively radiocarbon dated to the Late Middle Ages"[MS20].
• `There is no record of the shroud prior to the fourteenth century' I have left out "definitive" here and
next because the
Cambridge Dictionary defines it as: "firm, final, and complete; not to be questioned or changed," and so McDaniel is trying to win her argument by a
definition!
This is both fallacious and false. It is fallacious that if there was "no record of the shroud prior to the fourteenth century," it would not automatically prove that the Shroud was "a hoax that was originally created in France around the 1350s AD by an artist." Shroud sceptics would need to prove that. But, as the Irish theologian Patrick Beecher (1870-1940) pointed out in 1928, even if there was no "documentary evidence" for the origin of the Shroud, it "carrie[s] in itself its own proof of its genuineness":"
"Some eighteen months ago the London Times had a photograph of a bronze statue that was found at the bottom of the Aegean Sea. Experts examined it and pronounced it a genuine Greek statue. It was accepted as such; no one doubted the opinion that was expressed; and it will be labelled for all future time as a Greek statue. Suppose some one had objected and said: `No, I refuse to believe that it is a Greek statue unless I get documentary evidence as to when and where it was made, and how it came to be at the bottom of the sea.' Would that attitude be regarded as reasonable? ... NO, rather he would be looked upon as eccentric in not being able to see that the statue carried in itself its own proof of its genuineness. Very well, but we have vastly stronger intrinsic proof for the genuineness of the Shroud." (emphasis original)[BP28, 136-137].
And it is
false that there is no record of the shroud prior to the fourteenth century. For starters see in my "
The Turin Shroud in a nutshell":
After the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, Nicholas Mesarites (c. 1163-aft.1216), the Keeper of the Byzantine Empire's relic collection, recalled that in 1201[11Nov17] the collection included "the sindon [which had] wrapped the un-outlined (Gk. aperilepton), naked dead body [of Christ]"[11Jun16]. "sindon," "un-outlined," "naked." This can only have been the Shroud, 59 years before its earliest 1260 radiocarbon date and 154 years before the Shroud first appeared in c. 1355, in undisputed history, at Lirey, France[27Jul24]!
• `The earliest record of the shroud is a letter recording that the forger who made it had confessed' This is
false! Because the Shroud is not painted (see
above), there was no "forger who made it" and therefore no confession. d'Arcis provided no checkable details about the forger because there wasn't one:
d'Arcis made him up! That is, in this d'Arcis was
lying, just as he was lying about the "money" that Jeanne de Vergy and/or the Lirey church had "cunningly ... wrung from" the "multitude" (see
above). d'Arcis really
was "acting through jealousy and cupidity ... to obtain possession of the cloth for [him]self" (see
above)! And as for "The earliest record of the shroud" being in Bishop d'Arcis' 1389 memorandum,
see again, for starters Nicholas Mesarites' statement that in 1201, Constantinople's relic collection included "the
sindon [which had] wrapped the un-outlined (
aperilepton), naked dead body [of Christ]"!
• `The shroud doesn't match the kinds of funerary wrappings that were used in the Judaea in the first-century AD' This also is false. McDaniel's claims about the Shroud are largely arguments from ignorance because evidently she knows little of pro-Shroud literature. Today (21 December 2024) I briefly looked at the comments under her post, and in one of her replies she admitted, "I had not heard of Thomas de Wesselow ..."! Contrary to McDaniel's unsubstantiated assertion that, "The shroud doesn't match the kinds of funerary wrappings that were used in the Judaea in the first-century AD," Jewish scholar Victor Tunkel (1933-2019) confirmed in 1983 that "the Shroud [is] perfectly compatible with what he would expect of a Jew crucified in first century AD. Palestine"!:
"As a subject the Shroud traverses many religious divisions, and on 12 May it was a particular privilege to hear the views of a Jewish scholar, Victor Tunkel of the University of London. Victor Tunkel began his talk with a gentle reproof to many Shroud writers for relying too heavily on Christian sources rather than consulting the acknowledged complex world of Jewish Law and practice. He pointed out the lack of need for many of the theological arguments concerning whether the body of Jesus would or would not have been washed before burial. It was quite unnecessary to postulate the man of the Shroud having gone unwashed due to haste. Jewish Law is quite explicit that anyone who died a bloody death, as from crucifixion, would have gone unwashed, because it was important in Pharisaic belief for all elements of the body, including the life-blood, to be kept together. This was so that the body would be kept complete for a physical resurrection at the end of time. The same need for lack of disturbance of bloodstains meant that while one who died an unbloody death would have been buried in relatively normal clothes - shirt, breeches, etc - Jesus would have been wrapped in a single sheet called in Hebrew a sovev (the word means `to surround' or `go around') readily corresponding to what we know of the Turin Shroud. Victor Tunkel accordingly found the Shroud perfectly compatible with what he would expect of a Jew crucified in first century AD. Palestine." (my emphasis)[WI83, 9].
• `The shroud doesn't match the description of Jesus's funerary wrappings in the Gospel of John.' McDaniel asserts with no references:
"In Judaea during the first century AD, people did not normally wrap whole bodies in a single rectangular piece of linen; instead, people wrapped the body in strips of linen and wrapped the head separately from the body using its own piece of linen. The Gospel of John 20:6–7 actually explicitly describes Jesus’s head and body having been wrapped separately in precisely this manner."
Because McDaniel is ignorant of pro-Shroud literature (see
above), she fails to distinguish between the burial of Jews who died a normal, unbloody death, like
Lazarus (Jn 11:1-44), and Jews who died a bloody death, like Jesus, as explained
above:
"The same need for lack of disturbance of bloodstains meant that while one who died an unbloody death would have been buried in relatively normal clothes - shirt, breeches, etc - Jesus would have been wrapped in a single sheet called in Hebrew a sovev ... readily corresponding to what we know of the Turin Shroud."
And the Gospel of John does not purport to provide a "description of Jesus's funerary wrappings"
at the time of Jesus' burial. The gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke do that:
Mt 27:59-60 "And Joseph [of Arimathea] took the body [of Jesus] and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud [sindon] and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock."
Mk 15:46: "And Joseph [of Arimathea] bought a linen shroud[sindon], and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock."
Lk 23:53: "Then he [Joseph of Arimathea] took it [the body of Jesus] down and wrapped it in a linen shroud [sindon] and laid him in a tomb cut in stone, where no one had ever yet been laid."
The Gospel of John's account is a "description of Jesus's funerary wrappings"
after Jesus had been resurrected:
Jn 20:3-8 "3 So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. 4 Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths [othonia "strips of linen" NIV] lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 and the face cloth [soudarion], which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed;"
So at the time of Jesus' burial, his wrists, ankles and chin would have been bound with strips of linen[othonia] to keep them together; a facecloth [soudarion] was moved to the top of Jesus' supine head; within an all-enveloping shroud (sindon = Heb. sovev). After Jesus' resurrection, the strips of linen (othonia) and the facecloth (soudarion) were in the empty tomb, but the Shroud (sindon) was no longer there-Jesus had taken it with him out of the tomb! See my "Servant of the priest" mini-series.
• `The fabric of the shroud has also been conclusively radiocarbon dated to the Late Middle Ages.' The 1260-1390 radiocarbon date of the Shroud cannot be correct! Not only are there historical refererences to what can only be the Shroud, long before 1260, for example Nicholas Mesarites' above recollection that in 1201, Constantinople's relic collection included "the sindon [which had] wrapped the un-outlined (aperilepton), naked dead body [of Christ]," which can only be the Shroud. There also are artistic references to what can only be the Shroud long before 1260. For example, the 1192-95 Pray Codex 
[Right (enlarge): The Entombment of Christ (upper) and Three Marys [sic Mk 16:1-6] at the tomb (lower). The images are claimed as one of the evidences against the radiocarbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Turin (Wikipedia's words. My emphasis)[PCW]!]
which contains four pen and ink drawings that are at least 100 years earlier (i.e. 1095)[MP98, 33]. Two of those four drawings contain at least fourteen unique correspondences with the Shroud (see 04Oct18), far too many to be the result of chance!
• `The proportions of the figure on the shroud are anatomically incorrect.' Another unsubstantiated assertion from McDaniel! One of the earliest supporters of the Shroud being Jesus' burial sheet was the agnostic, Professor of Anatomy at the Sorbonne, Yves Delage (1854–1920):
"Yves Delage (13 May 1854 – 7 October 1920) was a French zoologist known for his work into invertebrate physiology and anatomy. He also discovered the function of the semicircular canals in the inner ear. He is also famous for noting and preparing a speech on the Turin Shroud, arguing in favour of its authenticity. Delage estimated the probability that the image on the shroud was not caused by the body of Jesus Christ as 1 in 10 billion"(Wikipedia's words. My emphasis)[DYW]
And he did this because of the anatomical realism of the Shroud!:
"Yves Delage, who at the turn of the century was the Sorbonne's distinguished professor of comparative anatomy. It is ironic that Delage, who was a religious agnostic (and continued to be an agnostic during and after his study of the Shroud) was thus cast as the champion of the Shroud's authenticity ... Delage insisted that the anatomical detail revealed by Pia's photographs was too correct to have been produced by an artist" (my emphasis)[DR84, 4]
"In early 1900, after hearing of the mysterious photographs taken of the Shroud by Secondo Pia in 1898, he [Vignon] met with Pia and was convinced that the image on the Shroud could not have been painted. Vignon worked closely with Yves Delage, a professor of anatomy at the Sorbonne. Their association was unique in that Vignon was a devout Catholic while Delage was an agnostic. Delage concurred that the photographs of the Shroud were anatomically correct and could not have been produced by an artist" (my emphasis)[GV01, 51]
"It was only in 1898, when the first photograph of the Shroud was taken by Secondo Pia, that the full detail of the man on the Shroud was seen in the negative produced by Pia ... The first medical study of Pia's photographs was carried out by a team at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1900, led by a biologist, Paul Vignon. Their findings were presented by one of the team members, Prof Yves Delage, in a lecture to the Paris Academy of Sciences. He explained that, from a medical point of view, the wounds and other markings on the Shroud were so anatomically flawless that they could not have been the work of an artist. It was his conclusion that the Shroud bore the image of Christ, created by some unknown process as he lay in the tomb" (my emphasis)[OM10, 170].
Due to their ignorance of pro-Shroud literature, sceptics assume that the Shroudman is lying flat (see
22Jul12) and therefore his body looks anatomicaly distorted. But in fact, he was lying on the Shroud in his hanging-on-a-cross position, fixed by rigor mortis (see
05Jun22), which could only be broken at the shoulders, not at the larger abdominal and leg muscles:
"The dorsal view of the legs provides crucial evidence of the state of the body and its position in death. As we have seen, the left foot appears half-hidden, as if it slightly overlapped the right, and this ties in with the fact that the right calf is much more strongly marked than the left, implying that the left leg was raised a little off the cloth. This arrangement, which is not how the lower legs and feet rest naturally, is best understood in terms of rigor mortis. When someone dies, their body initially goes limp, but within three hours (sooner if the body is hot) a complex chemical reaction in the muscles causes them to become rock hard, and the body remains fixed in position. This is the condition known as rigor mortis. The man wrapped in the Shroud would seem to have died with one foot crossed over the other, his left leg fractionally bent, a position maintained after death ... The position of the hands is also revealing. They are crossed over the genitals, which is lower on the body than we might expect. If you lie down on a flat surface and attempt to recreate the pose, you will find that your upper arms naturally rest on the ground and your hands cross nearer your navel, about 6 inches higher up the body than on the Shroud. To imitate the Shroud's image, you have to lift your arms and hold them almost straight - an unnatural resting position. What can account for this posture? The answer, I think, is that the man's arms were fixed in rigor mortis and maintained the stiff position they had on the cross, except that they would originally have been splayed out either side of his head. The rigor in the shoulders must have been broken - an operation requiring quite a bit of force - so that the arms could be contained within the narrow sheet (and help preserve the man's modesty)"[DT12, 144-146]
Note that the above explanation is by Thomas de Wesselow, who McDaniel admitted
above "I had not heard of..."!
Artist and physicist, Isabel Piczek (1927-2016), after a careful study of
[
Above: Artist Isabel Piczek's reconstruction of how Jesus body was bent forward due to
rigor mortis having set in while he was left hanging dead on the cross for several hours[
PI96].]
Shroud photographs, has depicted what the Shroudman would have looked like in profile, lying on the Shroud in death.
• `The proportions of the figure on the shroud closely match the proportions of figures in Gothic art of the fourteenth-century.' Yet another unsubstantiated assertion from McDaniel! See previously, "Where are her supporting references from Gothic art experts that the Shroud is a work of mid-14th century Gothic art"? There would not be any! Compare artist and physicist Isabel Piczek's reconstruction above of how Jesus body was bent forward due to rigor mortis on the Shroud, with McDaniel's chosen 
[Right (enlarge): Central tympanum, Chartres Cathedral, France. Note that these are not Gothic art depictions of Jesus, of which there aren't any, or McDaniels would provide them. McMcDaniel asks us in her post to: "Notice the small foreheads, long lower faces, long arms, and long bodies—all features of Gothic art that are found in the Turin Shroud"! But this is a straw man fallacy by McDaniel, born of her ignorance of pro-Shroud literature! She sets up a false, lying flat, carri-cature of the Shroudman and then claims it matches the Shroud! When I was doing my Biology degree we were told not to write a scientific paper until we spent a year thoroughly researching the literature on our chosen topic. McDaniel aspires to be a scholar but she has evidently spent little or no time researching pro-Shroud literature. She should be ashamed of her lack of ingrained scholarly rigour!]
example of `Shroud-like' Gothic art above! On the topic of Chartres Cathedral, if McDaniel ever reads this my reply to her post (which now appear close together in Google searches), she might want to read my 2018 post, "Shroud-like Jesus in a stained glass window (c.1150) in Chartres Cathedral, France" Not only does it have un-Gothic, Shroud-like, depictions of Jesus, some of the stained glass windows dated c. 1150 have features (e.g. the reversed 3 bloodstain) which are original on the Shroud (~110 years before the Shroud's earliest 1260 radiocarbon date)! Also, to bring McDaniel up to speed on pro-Shroud literature, she might also read my 2024 post "The Turin Shroud in a nutshell."
• `The bloodstains on the shroud are not consistent with how blood flows naturally, which suggests the stains have been painted on.' McDaniels continues to parade her ignorance of pro-Shroud literature! First, as Dr Pierre Barbet (1884–1961), Chief Surgeon of St Joseph's Hospital, Paris, and a battlefield surgeon in World War I, discovered in the 1930s, that the bloodstains on the Shroud are almost all clotted, not flowing, blood:
"As I lacked the chance of making such decisive experiments, it was precisely the study of these pictures of the clots which led me to the conclusion that they really were counter-drawings of congealed blood. ... In the eyes of a surgeon they possess a most striking realism, which I have never yet seen in any painting. All painters ... paint flows of blood with more or less parallel edges, and are well content as long as they follow the laws of gravity ... But these are flows of liquid blood, of blood which is not clotted. And they imagine that they are thus being realistic. There is no flow of blood on the shroud; there are only the counter-drawings of clots; these clots represent that part of the blood which has congealed on the skin, while flowing over it."[BP53, 27-28]
Second, the blood on the Shroud is not paint but
real, human, blood. From my book in progress (references omitted):
Real, human blood The bloodstains on the Shroud are real human blood. Real blood The Shroudman's blood is real. At STURP’s final public meeting in New London, Connecticut, on 10-11 October, 1981, when Adler was asked how he could answer McCrone's claim that there was no blood on the Shroud but merely red ochre and vermilion, Adler put on the screen a table listing 12 tests of Shroud samples which he and Heller had conducted that confirmed the presence of blood. Adler concluded, `That means that the red stuff on the Shroud is emphatically, and without any reservation, nothing else but B-L-O-O-D!’ Human blood The blood is human. In 1980 Adler and Heller, analysing STURP’s 1978 sticky tape samples, found that under ultraviolet light a sample from a Shroud bloodstained area returned a fluorescent antibody result consistent with a primate origin. This supported a human source for the blood marks, as the only non-human primates in medieval Europe were a small population of Barbary Macaques in the mountains of Gibraltar. And the image on the shroud is that of a human, not an ape! In 1978, Dr Pierluigi Baima-Bollone (1937-), Professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Turin, was permitted to remove fragments of threads from the Shroud. In 1983, Baima-Bollone and Dr Agostino Gaglio (1950-2013), also by means of fluorescent antigen-antibody reactions, confirmed that the Shroud blood is indeed human blood. Blood group AB Then in 1983 at the 1984 Italian National Shroud Congress, Profs Baima-Bollone and Gaglio reported that they had confirmed the identification of the blood group AB in Shroud bloodstains."
• `The fabric of the shroud was made using a complex weave that was common in the Late Middle Ages but was not used for burial shrouds in the time of Jesus.' The Shroud's "complex weave" is three-to-one, herringbone twill:
"From previous visual study of the Shroud weave, a certain amount of information had already been deduced. The overall style of the weave had been generally agreed to be a three-to-one herringbone twill- each weft thread passing alternately under three warp threads and over one, producing diagonal lines, which reverse direction at regular intervals to create the herringbone pattern. That was in itself interesting, as most known Palestinian, Roman, and Egyptian linens of around the time of Christ tend to `plain weave'- i.e., a simple `one over, one under' style. The more complex three-to-one twill of the Shroud is certainly known from the period, but in silks rather than linen ... The lack of linen samples by no means invalidates the authenticity of the Shroud, merely suggesting a somewhat costly manufacture, as indeed one would expect of a purchase of the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea"[WI79, 69]
"As for the linen itself, the weave is a three-to-one herringbone twill: in running through the warp, the weft passes under three threads and then over one, but each successive thread of the weft begins at an ascending point one thread earlier (and then, in series, at a descending point) in the pattern, producing the diagonal `herringbone' design. This particular pattern is known from antiquity as well as from the Middle Ages, although the ancient examples are silk rather than linen. It is, at any rate, a more elaborate and complicated weave than the usual over-under-over `plain' pattern, and suggests that the cloth was relatively expensive"[DR84, 12].
Again, McDaniel cites no sources, so presumably she is just making it up! If the Shroud's weave was "common in the Late Middle Ages" then there would be many examples of it today. But in fact there are
only two known examples of three-to-one herringbone twill weave in linen: a
14th century coarse fragment in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the `canvas' of a
16th century painting by Martin de Vos (see "
c. 1375"). And as for three-to-one herringbone twill weave "was not used for burial shrouds in the time of Jesus" McDaniels cannot know this, and so I assume she is making this up also! Since the "more complex three-to-one twill of the Shroud is ... known from the period, but in silks rather than linen" there is no reason why it was not used for linen burial shrouds in the time of Jesus. A likely reason why there are no surviving examples of first century three-to-one herringbone twill weave in linen, other than the Shroud, is because linen cloths were recycled into burial shrouds, and they decomposed with their bodies[
MR80, 72;
WI10, 31].
By her failure to read pro-Shroud literature for herself, and to gullibly rely on anti-Shroud sources, tragically McDaniel is yet another Shroud sceptic example of `
the blind being led by the blind' (
Mt 15:14; Lk 6:39):
[Above (enlarge)[FPB]: "The Blind Leading the Blind," 1568, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-69)].
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]
Bibliography
AM00. Antonacci, M., 2000, "Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY,.
BA34. Barnes, A.S., 1934, "The Holy Shroud of Turin," Burns Oates & Washbourne: London.
BP05. Ball, P., 2005, "To know a veil," Nature, 28 January.
BP28. Beecher, P.A., 1928, "The Holy Shroud: Reply to the Rev. Herbert Thurston, S.J.," M.H. Gill & Son: Dublin.
BP53. Barbet, P., 1953, "A Doctor at Calvary," [1950], Earl of Wicklow, transl., Image Books: Garden City NY, Reprinted, 1963.
DR84. Drews, R., 1984, "In Search of the Shroud of Turin: New Light on Its History and Origins," Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham MD.
DT12. de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London.
DYW. "Yves Delage," Wikipedia, 27 October 2024.
FCW. "File:Cenral [sic] tympanum Chartres.jpg," Wikimedia Commons, 21 June 2024.
FPB. "File:Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1568) The Blind Leading the Blind.jpg," Wikimedia Commons, 22 June 2024.
GV01. Guerrera, V., 2001, "The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity," TAN: Rockford IL.
MM02. Minor, M., Adler, A.D. & Piczek, I., eds., 2002, "The Shroud of Turin: Unraveling the Mystery: Proceedings of the 1998 Dallas Symposium," Alexander Books: Alexander NC.
MP98. Maloney, P.C., 1998, "Researching the Shroud of Turin: 1898 to the Present: A Brief Survey of Findings and Views," in MM02, 16-47
MR80. Morgan, R.H., 1980, "Perpetual Miracle: Secrets of the Holy Shroud of Turin by an Eye Witness," Runciman Press: Manly NSW, Australia.
MS20. McDaniel, S., 2020, "The Shroud of Turin Is Definitely a Hoax," Tales of Times Forgotten, 24 February.
NJ87. Nickell, J., 1987, "Inquest on the Shroud of Turin," [1983], Prometheus Books: Buffalo NY, Revised, Reprinted, 2000.
NJ15. Nickell, J., 2015, "Fake Turin Shroud Deceives National Geographic Author," 23 April.
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PI96. Piczek, I., 1996, "Alice in Wonderland and the Shroud of Turin," Proceedings of the Esopus Conference, August 23rd-25th, Esopus, New York.
SD89. Scavone, D.C., 1989, "The Shroud of Turin: Opposing Viewpoints," Greenhaven Press: San Diego CA.
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TF06. Tribbe, F.C., 2006, "Portrait of Jesus: The Illustrated Story of the Shroud of Turin," Paragon House Publishers: St. Paul MN, Second edition.
WI79. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition.
WI83. Wilson, I., 1983, "A Jewish View of the Shroud of Turin," BSTS Newsletter, No. 6, September/December, 8-9
WI91. Wilson, I., 1991, "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: London.
WI98. Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY.
WI10. Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London.
Posted 16 December 2024. Updated 4 January 2025.
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